theLUNE.org

This is a nice find from the New York Times on vertical farming, a new approach to green urban planning. Not only does it provide potentially great public health benefits, the renderings are just artistically exquisite.

Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to spread his vision for “vertical farms” — 30-story towers that could feed thousands of people. He created the concept in 1999 with his graduate students, and it has since captured the imagination of architects and various city planners. The following images are artistic renderings of what some of these farms of the future might look like.

View the rest of the slide show »

During my Environmental Health Sciences class, Despommier gave a lecture on his vision of vertical farming. His concept was so innovative and ingenious that it inspired me to plan a small scale vertical vegetable garden. Based on Despommier’s lecture, there are numerous advantages of vertical farming compared to our traditional farming methods including:*

Vertical farming can potentially change the landscape of urban areas by creating greener and environmentally friendly epicenters that have a vital function for the surrounding population. More importantly, it also has the potential to improve global health, economies, and environments.

Interestingly, vertical farms offer potential protection against infectious disease such as the avian flu, malaria, and schistosomiasis, to name a few. This is because traditional agricultural farming can be an interface for disease to occur or can alter the environment to allow for vectors, such as mosquitoes, to grow and consequently spread diseases like malaria. How long will it be before this concept takes flight? I only hope that Despommier’s vision will become a reality in our lifetime.

*Information from 2006 Despommier lecture at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Cornell Capa, distinguished photojournalist and founder of the International Center of Photography in New York city.

It was the late Cornell Capa (1918-2008) who coined the phrase “the concerned photographer,” positioning the photographer as witness, but also the preserver and messenger of the world’s social realities.

I struggled for some time to define in words what I meant by ‘concerned photography,’ but as it often happens, the present is often defined in terms of the past. Lewis W. Hine, an early humanitarian-with-a-camera, may have stated it best: ‘There were two things I wanted to do. I wanted to show things that had to be corrected. I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated.” (The Concerned Photographer, 1968)

Since 1946 he was a staff photographer at Life and joined Magnum photo in 1954. During that year he made a study on the the lives of mentally retarded children (Retarded Children Can Be Helped, 1957), offering a more humanistic and hopeful view of a population that is all too often marginalized. Instead of focusing on differences, he looks at the potential of these children who are just as capable and important.

“The parent-run nursery teaches the children to draw, obey simple directions and play…” (from Retarded Children Can Be Helped, p. 65)

Capa continued to shed light on the lives of people struggling to survive in Latin America in his collection of images for Margin of Life: Population and Poverty in the Americas, published in 1974. By putting a face on the problems of health, education, employment and poverty facing the people of El Salvador and Honduras, they were no longer numbers or statistics, but people whose suffering and survival were real and so close by.

What I appreciate so much about Capa was his sense of responsibility to his subjects, his ability to “feel” for his subjects. “To really be a passioned person, you can’t really be objective. And if you’re objective, your pictures will not be very passionate,” he said in an NPR article. In an age when it is tempting for artist’s to exploit social tragedies to boost their own careers, Capa had courage to care about his subjects beyond one’s own personal ambitions. He focused his lens on their needs and their struggles, illuminating the dignity of those he served.

Capa passed on May 23, 2008 in his New York home at the age of 90.

View Capa’s Magnum Portfolio »

Learning About Social Integration of People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

“Integration is meaningful if it is social integration, i.e. if it involves social interaction and acceptance and not merely physical presence.” - Wolfsenberger (Race, 2003)

It was not until I took a class on disabilities that I learned extensively about the persistent problems that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD) faced in our society. The following sentiment by Parmenter (2001) touched the core inside my being as I finished my analysis of policies and public perceptions of this vulnerable, yet resilient population:

These people have consistently been denied personhood; they have been seen as objects of pity, fear, or both; they have been oppressed; and with the rise of the eugenics movement, they have been seen as a threat to the very quality of the human race.

The struggle for inclusion within our society is one that this population, their families, advocates, and care providers have been fighting for decades. Social attitudes such as fear and misconceptions of people with ID/DD have been deeply embedded in society throughout our history (as seen with sterilization and institutionalization). Unfortunately, these attitudes have persisted in more subtle ways to deny the humanity and citizenship of this population through exclusionary practices and policies (e.g. exclusionary zoning, policies to prevent homes from being established in communities), and resistance of communities from allowing people with ID/DD from integrating into their neighborhoods.

To give you a bit of background, my analysis centered on people with ID/DD living in non-institutionalized group homes within the community and I was fortunate enough to interview a friend who worked as a group home manager in Massachusetts. In defining “inclusion” the most fitting definition I found was one by the Governor’s Commission on Mental Retardation (GCMR) that defined it as “being an integral part of and having control over those events, services, and supports that will influence one’s life” (GCMR, 1996). This definition reflects the social model of thinking about disabilities that is gradually replacing the medical model that treats disabilities by focusing on the functional limitations of the individual (on the presumption that the illness resides within the body) rather than on external or environmental sources. The social model views disability as a product of the intrinsic aspects of an individual and interactions with their social and physical environment, and subsequently views disability as having limitations in life activities (Bickenbach, 2001). Read more »