BZD Films

A Vision of the Future: Sustainable City-Life

Functional city-life involves interactivity, movement, and good food.

Promote Biking

Since leaving high school in Colorado (where the backyard were the mountains to hike and climb), I went to Vancouver, BC and from day one I began to bike nearly everyday as my primary mode of transportation. Things were close to where I lived, both on campus and when I moved close to central downtown. Biking was conducive to my every day tasks, going to work or school and out in the evenings.

After moving to Atlanta, I got a bike immediately and tried to bike everywhere. I thought, it doesn’t rain as much here and the weather is more pleasant (except during the dreaded summer heat) so biking must be better. The winding, dark, often unlabeled streets of Atlanta are difficult to navigate and NOT bike friendly, never mind that one time I took an unlabeled detour that took my onto I-80 North. Still, now that I’ve gotten to know the areas better (L5P, Midtown, Decatur), there are a few good spots within biking distance.

This summer, I lived in Washington, D.C. where everything is very close and bike lanes are the norm in the downtown streets. However, I have been here in the winter and it can get cold and snowy; likewise in Vancouver it rained a lot, and all that bad weather leads to a need for good:

Public Transportation

Vancouver is built around pedestrian travel, and has a solid bus system as well as an intelligent train system that connects the suburbs to the city where the buses or bikes they brought with them will get them anywhere they need to go on an average day. Atlanta, would have been wise to improve its train system, the struggling MARTA barely hanging on (MARTA, AJC) but their buses are defunct, hard to find, run inexplicably late, leaving a person without a car in a bad situation. DC on the other hand built out its system and as a result, areas around metros are very active with people walking around, getting exercise, saving money (by not driving), and are more productive by reading, working or relaxing while in transit.

It’s time to get behind a nation-wide train system to solve many of our transportation needs in the U.S. We could save billions and help bring an end to our reliance on foreign oil for one thing. Another benefit is that it will promote more walking, which has the potential of saving millions for the struggling health care system. As much as I’d like to continue the (nearly endless) list of reasons why we should invest in trains (luckily Obama seems to agree), I’ll move on to the next point:

Farming

Especially in place like Georgia, where the growing season is long and there is usually plenty of natural moisture, there is really no good excuse not to have your own garden. Alright, well as we work longer hours (I go to school full time and work an average of 30hr/wk), we don’t have the time it takes to cultivate a functional garden. I too am guilty of this unfortunately. However, in the course of my studies, I created a diagram to illustrate how a community might establish a farming collective. (will look for the diagram to scan/post in the next could of days) I know of people who do this in Colorado and Portland. These are very functional ways of providing fresh fruit and vegetables to communities. More importantly, it will also “teach people how to fish” in that they will have the tools and knowledge to continue to produce their own food in a healthy and affordable way for as long as the land lasts.

Tomorrow Comes Today

As we proceed and progress into the future, we can look for ways to organize and use the technology that has so immensely changed our lives forever. Computers, cameras, audio recording, the internet – just to mention the few I use the most frequently have given us great freedoms and the ability to connect, listen and learn like never before. However, while we gather from the collective conscious (a.k.a. world-wide-web) we must not forget the fundamentals. Life, liberty, and happiness are very much a function of health, nutrition and empowerment through knowledge and understanding. This is not meant to be read as the solution, merely thoughts on a few moves in the right direction.

Typed over the course of three days on an iPod Touch (and later a keyboard)

Blueline family business after a morning of blueberries slowly melted into a heavenly hemp filled waffle iron. Out of bounds moving trains and fields and hot damp heavy air. Quickly passing the passengers patiently waiting in vain for their ride to no where fast thinking they know exactly where the yellow meets the blue and stumps you with the green envy of times recently fleeted in seemingly mundane house tasks holding up seconds and minutes and hours until days pass by without stopping for just a moment to chart a map the game plan the play by play telling of tomorrow. And in those seemingly feeble seconds that quickly pass and add into an eternity life stretches just to the point when the last person left standing on the isle is watching the train disappear into a dark and damp tunnel ahead. That’s the point that tardiness reveals it’s dark and sinister head once more. The clouds grow until the sky is left a gloomy grey. And then everlasting life pours mercifully and bellows in thunderous roars. Salvation streams down once more. Torrential winds wake the sleeping elders who have no choice but to feel brave and live with the uncertain knowledge that it’s always going to be alright.

Endless summer driving through countryside forests paved with subdivisions powered by fossil fueled rendezvouses with city slickers working class tied to the roadside that is the lifeline otherwise known as cold-hard cash which flies in with bulldozers and concrete and paves the way for pseudo-citylife in subdivided housing split with fences piercing green lawns into neatly squared sections of green macabre ideas of ownership.

Suburbs:

Wanderings guided by the paved black asphalt take me out to nowhere in particular. Countryside slips by fast past the frame of the moving car window. Soon I think, we’ll be there but first we must stop to appease the inconsolable, a wee one in the midst of a rage.

Crying shielded by distance and cages separating the outside world with its menacing fresh air and bugs buzzing by until splat splat windows covered in dead bugs that look like clouds soaked with detergent until the squeegee takes them away. Promises of lunch and nourishment fade into a hazy frenzy and freefall of logical sensory inputs which normally lead the way … home. But before returning the stop in somewhat isolated center representing oriental countries abound with shopping filled trinkets bubbles plastic ceramic more so much more than was available hours earlier in the height of the hot afternoon sun.

Banging and sitting and thinking and moving preceded the jumping and sliding and spinning and falling by mere minutes or so it would seem in afterthought. The closing notes on a well performed show always leave the crowd and performer begging for more and more for all eternity. Not all shows can close gracefully but this one did and with a final push and closing of a gate and the smell of rain permeating everything around it was confirmed that magic is still made with the building of momentum until at long last

I just received a copy of tomorrow’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (CDC) in my inbox. The special publication this week is particularly relevant to my research and to the INDIAbetes film: “Recommended Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States” There is so much to say about it, but I’ve only got a few minutes, so please excuse my less than comprehensive review. I suggest you read it for yourself, of course:
Recommended Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States

The paper reports 24 recommended strategies, all of which are evidence-based or concepts supported by leading researchers and policymakers. I’ll list them all at the end, but I’ve only got time to comment briefly, therefore you will be spared a 10 page essay on the finer points of bicycling in Atlanta’s rush hour traffic.

What I found to be most immediately striking was how demonstrative the strategies are, when considered as a cohesive approach, of the many layers of politics, logistics/infrastructure, behavioral theory, medical and epidemiological evidence, and socioeconomic and environmental issues surrounding the response to the rising prevalence of nutrition-related chronic diseases in the US.

For example, consider Recommendations 3&4 versus 5&6:

->Recommendations 3 and 4 are in support of increasing access to and availability of healthy foods in “underserved areas” (low socioeconomic areas, rural and urban) by providing monetary and political incentives to stores that carry these foods.
->Recommendations 5 and 6 support facilitating the community’s ability to buy food directly from local farms (i.e. supporting farmer’s markets and other similar mechanisms) as well as providing incentives to the farmers along the same vein as the “incentives for food retailers”.

Recommendations 3 and 4 are straight out of the field of Environmental (in)Justice—responding to the fact that environmental burdens are disproportionately borne by residents of low socioeconomic areas. Not only does this include the obvious burdens like environmental contamination and immediate health hazards, but also the perhaps more subtle inequities like lack of access to healthy foods, safe locations for physical activity, as well as the aggressive advertising of “junk food” and alcohol. There is strong evidence to support such a recommendation: increased access to healthy foods tends to correlate with healthier eating behaviors, provided the food is affordable and culturally-appropriate.

However, a major difference between Recommendations 3&4 versus 5&6 to increase access to healthy foods at the community level is that the former offers a potentially more immediate, short-term solution, whereas the latter is a long-term solution. Bringing in supermarkets that promise to ship in potatoes from Idaho, oranges from California, 12-grain bread containing ingredients from 8 states and three countries, and fat-free milk from any one of x-thousands of cows without functioning immune systems is, I hope, obviously a short-term solution to the lack of access to healthy foods.

I described Recommendations 5&6 as “long-term” to represent both the challenges to and vital advantages of promoting a direct relationship between communities and local farms. In short, an obvious challenge is behavior change (large supermarkets are familiar) and an obvious advantage is the relevance of reducing the community’s dependence on the massive, centralized food production industry to supporting the local economy, making the community less vulnerable to outbreaks and disruptions in the food supply, and perhaps tugging a little on the reigns of climate change. While still challenging, there exists a wealth of knowledge on effective approaches to behavior change based on well-established predictive models of health behavior, such as the Health Belief Model, the Transtheoretical Model, and the Theory of Reasoned Action. Community-based education and programs are invaluable to public health– school field trips to pick-your-own farms, “senior days” at the farmer’s market, event collaborations between social and religious groups with local markets, etc.

To return to my original statement that the list, as a whole, gives the reader a sense of the multi-disciplinary complexity of the issue of overnutrition:
Isn’t it a little disquieting to see the simultaneous promotion of such a harmful food production and distribution system alongside its necessary, “green” alternative? What does this say about CDC’s confidence in the latter to overcome all the external forces pushing against it?

Before I crawl back into the lab, I must make one more comment on #4. I wonder how this proposed support (ex: zoning variances) and funding (ex: loans, tax benefits) might be used by and benefit small, local businesses and markets versus major supermarkets? Food seems to be 99% politics and 1% sustenance in the United States these days. I wonder if these incentives would be exploited by major supermarkets and end up doing more harm than good for local businesses and markets.

There is so much more to be said about this publication (particularly about #21), but I really must get back to work. I’ll leave you with a few quotes from the publication:

On local food:

“Providing incentives to encourage the production, distribution, and procurement of food from local farms aims might increase the availability and consumption of locally produced foods by community residents, enhance the ability of the food system to provide sufficient quantities of healthier foods, and increase the viability of local farms and food security for communities.”

“Evidence suggests that dispersing agricultural production in local areas around the country (e.g., through local farms and urban agriculture) would increase the amount of produce that could be grown and made available to local consumers, improve economic development at the local level (51,52), and contribute to environmental sustainability (53).”

On the potential benefits of local governments collecting data from farmer’s markets:

“The process of gathering information for this measurement might encourage more interaction between local governments and farmers’ markets and individual farmers, which could spur more local initiatives to support local food production and purchasing food from local farms.”

The Recommendations:
1. Communities Should Increase Availability of Healthier Food and Beverage Choices in Public Service Venues
2. Communities Should Improve Availability of Affordable Healthier Food and Beverage Choices in Public Service Venues
3. Communities Should Improve Geographic Availability of Supermarkets in Underserved Areas
4. Communities Should Provide Incentives to Food Retailers to Locate in and/or Offer Healthier Food and Beverage Choices in Underserved Areas
5. Communities Should Improve Availability of Mechanisms for Purchasing Foods from Farms
6. Communities Should Provide Incentives for the Production, Distribution, and Procurement of Foods from Local Farms
7. Communities Should Restrict Availability of Less Healthy Foods and Beverages in Public Service Venues
8. Communities Should Institute Smaller Portion Size Options in Public Service Venues
9. Communities Should Limit Advertisements of Less Healthy Foods and Beverages
10. Communities Should Discourage Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages
11. Communities Should Increase Support for Breastfeeding
12. Communities Should Require Physical Education in Schools
13. Communities Should Increase the Amount of Physical Activity in PE Programs in Schools
14. Communities Should Increase Opportunities for Extracurricular Physical Activity
15. Communities Should Reduce Screen Time in Public Service Venues
16. Communities Should Improve Access to Outdoor Recreational Facilities
17. Communities Should Enhance Infrastructure Supporting Bicycling
18. Communities Should Enhance Infrastructure Supporting Walking
19. Communities Should Support Locating Schools within Easy Walking Distance of Residential Areas
20. Communities Should Improve Access to Public Transportation
21. Communities Should Zone for Mixed-Use Development
22. Communities Should Enhance Personal Safety in Areas Where Persons Are or Could Be Physically Active
23. Communities Should Enhance Traffic Safety in Areas Where Persons Are or Could Be Physically Active
24. Communities Should Participate in Community Coalitions or Partnerships to Address Obesity

From: Recommended Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States

-Catherine Armbruster

WordPress vs. Drupal vs. Movable Type (and PixelPost)

This blog is published using a WordPress system. Likewise, the main sites I have built this summer have all been WordPress. I have customized my own templates (like on www.zejmedia.com) and quickly adapted free and easy to install pre-fab templates (like for Collaterally Damaged, which has since been adapted and altered slightly).

I have also built a site on Movable Type (seen at CenteredPolitics.com), and soon I will be building two new sites using the Drupal framework.

The Verdict?

Well, as much as I would like to continue to design sites in simple HTML+CSS, such as I’ve done for INDIAbetes, there is something to be said about well established Content Management Systems (CMS).
For one thing, it allows the site to have multiple authors and contributors and they don’t necessarily need to know how to code for the web and they’ll still be able to help the site grow. Additionally, these sites are easily expanded and have a solid framework behind them where you can use PHP code to do some cool things, such as dynamically updating pages that change on their own. Additionally, all the search engine optimization (SEO) has essentially been built into the way new content is generated. So as long as you put the content in, eventually your subjects will begin to appear at the top of search engine lists.

As far as each system goes, here are my thoughts:

• Movable Type: There are some cool things about MT, like the ability to incorporate multiple blogs into one site. Additionally, everything is fully customizable once you learn where each component lives. However, I give MT a bad review overall because it is difficult to author and upkeep. More importantly, their network of support is seriously lacking, and it often takes weeks for issues to be resolved. The real nail in the coffin for MT is that the back-end user interface is probably the most convoluted out of all of the pre-fab CMS admin panels.
• WordPress: I like WordPress quite a bit because it’s easy to use and install. Furthermore, anyone who has signed up for and used a free blogging platform, either from wordpress.org or a Google Blogger account will know how to use the admin panel of a WordPress site. That said, the few things that annoy me about WP are the bulk related to the platform. WP sites tend to be bulky on the code side and thus slow to load and update. A lot of this seems to stem fro the fact that WP is doing a lot of the back-end code work for the user, which is essential in today’s Web 2.0 world. There are also ways around the bulk and the slow loading, but they are not easy to incorporate into a site and take a lot of time and skill to properly build a site and platform around a WP install. Overall, thanks to the easy to setup and use templates and free open source solution, I would give WP a B+ when it comes to web solutions.
• Then there is Drupal: Now, I haven’t used Drupal too much, only for the last couple of days really. The backend setup is difficult and many server-side elements need to be manually manipulated in order to get the Drupal install to actually work. However, it’s really not all that bad because there is a huge team of support out there to help you out. Besides, if you stumble across a problem, chances are there’s already a working solution floating around out there. Finally, from what I’ve seen using the couple of Drupal installs I’ve recently setup, is that they don’t tend to have the same sort of lag issues I mentioned about that you’ll notice with WP sites. I haven’t gotten far enough into all of this yet to really identify why or whether it remains true and large and complicated sites. Also, the admin panel seems relatively easy to use. Additionally, a really cool thing about Drupal is that you can either use one of their MANY free templates to administer the back-end or it’s very easy to create your own templates, which is totally awesome. I look forward to using more Drupal in my web development, and will certainly keep posting about the conclusions.

Finally, an Aside:

This post is about CMS, blogging and web frames that can be used for complex, or not so complex sites. One system I left out mentioning above, but couldn’t leave out entirely was PixelPost, the system I’ve used to setup my own website www.briandanin.com. PixelPost is the solution for photographers and people who want to showcase art they create. The way PixelPost is setup is more for a picture-a-day type of sites. While there are work-arounds for gallery solutions, the community seems to frown upon them (and they don’t tend to work very elegantly). However, for a photographer or artist with a digital camera, PixelPost is the best way to easily establish an online presence and showcase work. One of my favorite features about PixelPost is the ability to upload several pictures from the admin panel and then set them to upload “one day after the last post”. This is great because you can upload 30 pictures and you’re set for a picture a day for the next month!

Black Cat Sucks!

Well, I was going to go to the Handsom Furs concert at Black Cat in DC on 14th & U St. We had even ridden our bikes all the way there. We were about to get vegetarian food at their restaurant also. Since we had biked, I had brought a bottle of water with me. However, one of the bouncers decided they had to check my bag before I could enter the restaurant even though it was a separate room and floor from the concert. Guess what? Outside water was not allowed. So, we left & the guy called me a dick on the way out. The result is that we got dinner somewhere else and skipped the show and instead went to see Food Inc.

The Result:
I finally got to see Food Inc!

My overall impression of the Black Cat venue has also been significantly altered for the worst. Well, thanks a lot jerks at Black Cat for reminding me about a film I earlier promoted as a Must See Film, but hadn’t yet had a chance to see.

I write this as I wait for the film to start, so be on the look-out for a review soon to be posted here.