Tannis Thompson-Catlett, “Creating a Scope for Focus for an Exploration of Food Justice”
Mentor: Arijit Sen, Architecture
Poster #175

If the end goal is for more people to get access to more healthful food, what is the first step? This project is an offshoot of a food justice exploratory program. The community garden was the impetus for this study into food justice. Food justice is commonly defined as the exercising of people’s right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food. Healthy food is defined as fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally appropriate, and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals. The focus of this project is the factors of everyday life that inform how people get the food they need to lead healthful lives. The initial step in addressing this matter was to consider the language used to discuss issues of food security and access, e.g. food desert vs food apartheid. A subsequent step was to explore food systems. How do we get food? What limitations or barriers persist when attempting to gather food? Each additional step begets more questions and further offshoots of the subject matter. This project utilized census data, exploration of geography, conversations with residents of the Midtown neighborhood of Milwaukee, and community leaders. We also listened to academic voices that focus their work on doing similar types of surveys and community-oriented work. All in all, the scope of this project, even with the local focus on the Midtown neighborhood, is massive. Our goal is to show trends and correlations between healthful food options, the economic vitality of the neighborhood, population density, and health outcomes. Our current findings show us to be on the right track. We’ve found direct relationships between the socioeconomic status of Midtown and its floundering food system. We have more work to do still to reach our goal but believe its implications could be vital to the neighborhood.