Community Design Collaborative hosts publication launch party on Wednesday, February 25, unveiling the results of an initiative created to revitalize older, urban neighborhoods through innovative design solutions.

Infill Philadelphia: Food Access, an initiative of the Community Design Collaborative in partnership with The Reinvestment Fund and The Food Trust, has just completed a highly-collaborative effort exploring how innovative design can improve access to fresh, healthy food in urban neighborhoods. The results—three conceptual designs for food markets in Philadelphia and Chester—will be featured in an upcoming publication and exhibition.
 
Infill Philadelphia: Food Access will officially wrap up with a publication launch party on Wednesday, February 25, from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the Center for Architecture, 1216 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA.  The conceptual designs created through Infill Philadelphia: Food Access will be exhibited at the Center for Architecture, February 13, 2009 through March 27, from 10:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
 
The designs reflect different approaches to using infill development to address food access and include: a satellite co-op for Weavers Way in a storefront building in West Oak Lane; the adaptive reuse of a former warehouse in downtown Chester, PA.; and a supermarket on a complex urban site on Girard Avenue.
 
Food access has a huge impact on a community's health and well-being. It is estimated that low-income neighborhoods have 30% fewer grocery stores per capita than higher income neighborhoods. Living in one of our nation's "food deserts" can mean an unreliable and limited diet, high food prices, soaring diabetes rates, and childhood obesity.

Last week, Mayor Nutter presented another round of budget cuts that represent a continued attack on the poor and working people of Philadelphia. Along with these proposed cuts, Nutter's office announced a series of town hall meetings -- meetings that are being sold to the public as places to be heard and for our input to be taken into account. Yet, the Mayor's meetings and the media coverage of this moment has not spelled out the very human effects the proposed budget cuts will have on our lives.

Instead, the Mayor's meetings and the media coverage of this moment follow the national media reporting on the economic crisis. Using the budgetary crisis as a rationale, tens of thousands of Philadelphians who struggle to make ends meet are being asked to sacrifice their basic needs. This is happening in the very same moment that the Mayor meets with Chamber of Commerce and plans a task force to ease the tax burden on Philadelphia's businesses . Looking at the situation in this light, it is hard not to recognize the Mayor's response to the shortfall as a vehicle for propping up the richest most powerful actors while increasing the exploitation of those who are the at the bottom of the economic structure. In specific, some what what we know is already happening in our communities:

• Today, the School District announced that 30-35 neighborhood schools are under threat of being shut or taken   over by privately-run companies, without accountability to students, parents or communities.

• Taxi drivers are expected to take the brunt of this economic downturn with rises in fees they pay to pick up customers from the airport, without a rise in the fare they receive as income.