Pushing the Idea of Pedestrian Malls

  • Last spring, the New York city government decided to close parts of Times Square to traffic, creating pedestrian-only plazas. (Photo courtesy of Sean Marshall)

Since the 1960s or ‘70s, people have flocked to suburban malls to shop and hang out. A lot of cities tried to get people back downtown by keeping cars out—they shut down streets and created pedestrian malls. Nora Flaherty reports the downtown pedestrian malls seldom worked, but some planners think it’s worth a try again.

Transcript

Since the 1960s or ‘70s, people have flocked to suburban malls to shop and hang out. A lot of cities tried to get people back downtown by keeping cars out—they shut down streets and created pedestrian malls. Nora Flaherty reports the downtown pedestrian malls seldom worked, but some planners think it’s worth a try again.

If you go to New York City’s Times Square, you’ll encounter a lot of lights, a lot of noise, throngs of tourists and office workers, and guys hawking theatre tickets…

But these days, you won’t encounter a tangle of cars, cabs, and busses. That’s because last spring, the city government decided to close parts of Times Square to traffic and create pedestrian-only plazas.

Rochelle Paterson works for the city. She says that the extra breathing space suits her just fine.

“I always thought 42nd street was so congested—and sometimes you need a place to sit and just relax.”

Now, New York is densely populated and people are used to walking to get around. It’s busy here. But pedestrian malls in other cities have often attempted to bring crowds into areas that cities wish would be busier.

A few decades ago, cities all over the country were feeling the pain as indoor malls opened in the suburbs….and lots of those cities hoped pedestrian malls would make downtowns centers of activity again.

Poughkeepsie, New York was one; and its mall did end up becoming a center of activity…

Just not the kind they were hoping for. The city shut down traffic. Built a nice pedestrian walkway. But then things went wrong. The city repealed laws against public drunkenness and loitering. A county social services office moved into the mall.

And then came drugs, gangs, and prostitution.

Ron Knapp is the police chief in Poughkeepsie; He was just starting his career in 1974 when the pedestrian mall was first built:

“So you kind of had a tough element out there that you had to deal with. And as those laws loosened up it hurt the mall, and as the businesses further went out, and once you’re in that downhill cycle it’s hard to stop.”

In 1981 Poughkeepsie decided to reopen the area to traffic as part of an effort to—again—revitalize downtown. Most of the 200-or-so American cities that tried out pedestrian malls were not successful. Reid Ewing is a professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, and he works with the American Planning Association:

“Ped traffic had been light before and businesses not doing that well with people fleeing to the suburbs in the 60s or 70s. And so the ped malls actually exacerbated the problem.”

People thought parking was a hassle. The downtown pedestrian malls were just not convenient.

There have been success stories, though—like Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, and Church Street, in Burlington, Vermont. And those successes tended to have a few things in common:

They were not in depressed downtowns; they were in areas where there tended to be a lot of students and tourists, and where people felt safe; and cities needed to provide a lot of activities—things like farmers markets—to bring people in.

In other words, a pedestrian mall could make an already-pretty-nice area, nicer…but it couldn’t pull an area out of the kind of a downhill slide.

….But having learned some tough lessons, a lot of urban planners like Reid Ewing are saying it’s time to try again.

“It’s just consistent with so many things happening today…dealing with climate change, the US obesity epidemic. Getting people out walking who would otherwise get in their cars. It’s a small thing but it’s an important part of this puzzle.”

Planners concede pedestrian malls cannot work just anywhere. But they can work…to make some areas more vibrant, and more environmentally friendly.

For The Environment Report, I’m Nora Flaherty.

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Parks in Parking Spaces

  • Every other day of the year, this little green oasis in Brooklyn is a parking space. (Photo by Norah Flaherty)

On September 18th, thousands of
people around the world will spend
the day sitting in parking spaces –
without their cars – as part of an
annual event called “Parking Day.”
The idea is to spark a conversation
about how we’re using our public spaces.
Nora Flaherty attended
last year’s Parking Day, and here’s
what she found:

Transcript

On September 18th, thousands of
people around the world will spend
the day sitting in parking spaces –
without their cars – as part of an
annual event called “Parking Day.”
The idea is to spark a conversation
about how we’re using our public spaces.
Nora Flaherty attended
last year’s Parking Day, and here’s
what she found:

(sound of park)

Last year at about this time, this little park on a busy Brooklyn
corner was packed. Packed with people like freelance writer Karen
Sherman. She was sitting cross-legged in the grass and just
beaming.

“Amazing! And the sun’s out and it’s this beautiful fall day and I
wish we could do it every day.”

But she couldn’t have done it every day— that little park was
temporary. Every other day of the year it’s a parking space.

In New York City last year, there were more than 50 parking day
parks – some with grass and fences, some with tents and lawn
chairs. And they didn’t just spring up overnight – as much as it
might have looked that way.

A few days before last year’s parking day, planning was underway
at a Brooklyn coffee house.

“So how long do we think it’s going to take to set up?”

Sod needed transporting, city permits needed confirming, and—
because of New York City’s unusual parking regulations—the
parking place had to be staked out at 3 am.

Anne Pope is the director of Sustainable Flatbush – the
organization that put together the parking-spot park in Brooklyn.
She says although Flatbush is one of the greenest neighborhoods in
Brooklyn, there aren’t a lot of public, green places where people
can just go and hang out.

“If you walk around the neighborhood you’ll say, ‘wow there’s so
much greenery and green space,’ but if it doesn’t happen to be
attached to a house you own you can’t access it.”

(sound of child fingerpainting)

So on Parking Day last year, parking spaces did become a place to
hang out, for adults, and for kids like brother and sister Quinn
Isreal and Yusuf Francis.

Quinn: “Whoa, Yusuf, you’re pushing me.”

Yusuf: “Whoopsie, sorry.”

Quinn: “It’s okay.”
They had just moved here from Georgia, and Quinn said this park,
with its soft grass, was a nice change from New York’s mostly
concrete playgrounds.

“‘Cause usually in parks when you fall you hurt yourself, but in
this park you don’t hurt yourself if you fall down, you’re going to
fall down on the grass.”

Now, finding a parking space on any day in New York City is
competitive.

Matt Shafer is with the Trust for Public Land – they were one of
the major sponsors of last year’s Parking Day. He says that not
everyone is thrilled to find they can’t find a place to put their car
because people are hanging out in parking spaces.

“Some people don’t quite grasp the concept of parking day; that’s
perfectly fine. In most cases it’s, ‘why are you taking up our
parking space?’”

For some people, though, the biggest disappointment is that the
little parking space park is gone the next day. Keka Marzigal is
with Sustainable Flatbush.

“A kid came by after school and he said, ‘this is so fun, we can
come here tomorrow and do our homework!’ and it really got me!”

There was no tomorrow for that little park. But, that kid might just
find another one this year as more people convert parking spaces
into parks for a day.

For The Environment Report, I’m Nora Flaherty.

Related Links

Nyc Buys Island for Birds

Across the country, urban rivers that were once used almost
exclusively for industrial purposes are being reclaimed as parks.
Recently, a little island in New York City’s east river took the first
steps to becoming a nature preserve. Nora Flaherty has this report:

Transcript

Across the country, urban rivers that were once used almost
exclusively for industrial purposes are being reclaimed as parks.
Recently, a little island in New York City’s east river took the first
steps to becoming a nature preserve. Nora Flaherty has this report:


New York City’s south Brother Island used to belong to a gravel
and sand company. In spite of this, the island is a wild place, and
one that’s home to hundreds of herons and other birds, it’s also a
stopover on the Atlantic flyway migration. And now it’s the
property of New York City.


Rose Harvey is the mid-Atlantic regional director of the Trust For
Public Land. She says places like South Brother Island are a
national priority:


“We are pretty much working on all the coasts in the bays in the estuaries along the rivers
in the urban areas to ensure that the urban rivers and [all] are protected as much as the
more rural and remote areas.”


Harvey says that although New York residents won’t be able to use
the land for recreation, there’s value in just being able to see a
wild place from the riverbank.


For the Environment Report, I’m Nora Flaherty.

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Suburbs in the City

  • Victoria Park seems like a neighborhood that one might see in a suburban area. But, in fact, it's located in downtown Detroit. (Photo by Nora Flaherty)

Many cities across the nation are looking to re-imagine themselves—they’re trying to become more like dense, walkable cities like San Francisco or Boston. But some people say that some cities weren’t originally designed to be like that. And people don’t necessarily want them to be. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:

Transcript

Many cities across the nation are looking to re-imagine themselves. They’re
trying to become more like dense, walkable cities like San Francisco or
Boston. But some people say that some cities weren’t originally designed to
be like that, and people don’t necessarily want them to be. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:


Aside from the cicadas and crickets, it’s a quiet afternoon in Victoria
park. There’s no one out on the tree-lined street, or on the large houses’
beautifully groomed front lawns.


Jerry Herron is an American Studies professor at Wayne State University. He says that this gated community has everything that people associate with suburbia.


“An artificially wind-y street, some kind of neoclassical details on the houses, a cul de sac at each end, plenty of cars in the garages, basketball hoops, all of the things that people would associate with characterstic life in suburbia. Except it’s in the middle of one of the oldest downtown industrial parts of the city of Detroit.”


Herron says that most urban planners wouldn’t expect to see a suburban-style
cul de sac right in the middle of the city.


“I think because it doesn’t look like one of those pre-arranged ideas of the city, cities aren’t supposed to look like suburban McMansions houses. Well, it turns out that that’s where people want to live, and if you build it in the city, they’ll come and buy the houses and be happy.”


That kind of thinking runs counter to what many urban planning experts might say. In fact, the success of Victoria Park might seem to be an oddity in planning circles, because most planners believe that it’s a specifically urban lifestyle that attracts people to cities, one that involves chic apartments, condos and busy streets, not lawn care and attached garages.


But Jerry Herron says that more suburban-style development is in keeping
with this city’s history.


“One of the important things about Detroit is that seventy-five percent of the people who live here – I believe that’s an accurate figure – virtually since the beginning of the city’s history, have lived in private houses, so that there’s really a dedication to this idea of private property, that they have something good, it has to be mine, it has to belong to me, which makes it very difficult then to imagine as desirable living in something I don’t own, that I have to share with other people, that I may just be renting.”


Regardless of whether they choose to live in private houses or high rise buildings, people who choose to live in the city like being able to spend less time in their cars than they would if they lived in the suburbs.


And they like the cultural attractions and diversity of the cities. And even if it might seem suburban compared to life in other cities, life in this city is still very different from life in the suburbs. Olga Savich grew up in Troy, Michigan a north-west suburb of Detroit. She now lives in a high rise building near downtown.


“I moved to the city because I just needed to get out of the suburbs, I lived
there my whole life, there’s nothing there but the mall, I didn’t
necessarily want to structure my whole life around shopping. So I moved to
the city because it seemed like it was exciting, like a new start.”


Although Savich likes the more traditionally urban aspects of the city, she
also likes the fact that there’s big open spaces, including Belle Isle park,
right in the middle of it.


“I used to walk down on a Saturday afternoon with a book and just sit on the rocks by Shane Park and you can put your feet in the water, you know, it’s really pretty. Going to belle isle, it’s almost like having your own Metropark, you know, right in your own back yard, it’s like a five-minute bike ride.”


And while a lot of people see Detroit’s big, empty urban spaces and abandoned and decaying buildings as the city’s big problem, other people are attracted to exactly those things. Jerry Herron lives in the same building as Olga Savich.


“There’s a lot of room in the middle of a city that’s 300 years old, a lot of green space in the city. And I think that people that are attracted to that kind of revitalization and the presence of significant decay find this a really exhilarating and exciting place. That abandonment attracts people, the way ruins attract people. And people who like it think it’s really unusual and unique and only Detroit looks like that really.”


Like a lot of big cities with decaying centers, Detroit is working hard to bring people in. Experts are thinking hard about what kind of cities people are looking to move to. And Herron says that anyone who’s trying to make a city like Detroit appealing to outsiders would do well to work with what the city already has, rather than trying to make it like other cities with different histories.


For the GLRC, I’m Nora Flaherty.

Related Links

Lofts Attract Urban Renewal

  • Lofts are no longer just structures with large windows and exposed brick. Lofts are quickly becoming a symbol of the lifestyle of the young, urban professional. (Photo by Lester Graham)

In cities across the nation, old warehouses, factories and other buildings are being turned into brand new luxury loft apartments, and for many urban areas, those apartments are a big part of trying to get people to move back to cities from the suburbs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:

Transcript

In cities across the nation, old warehouses, factories and other buildings are being turned into brand new luxury loft apartments. And for many urban areas, those apartments are a big part of trying get people to move back to cities from the suburbs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has that story:


Abby Cook is taking a tour of the Union Square Condos.


“…finished the dining area, old basketball hoops and signs throughout the building, so…”


The condos are being built in what used to be a high school, and when they’re finished, the apartments will have a lot of the things that lofts are known for. They’ll have high ceilings, hardwood floors, big windows and exposed brick.


“It’s a great use of the building, it’s a neat idea and just the uniqueness, I think of it.”


Cook is excited about the idea of moving to downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. She lives in the suburbs now.


“Location is key, I think. Being that I am a young person, and I go out a lot, being close to downtown, just being close and the convenience is huge, just huge.”


Developers all over are building these kinds of lofts in empty city centers. That’s because lofts are thought to attract a group that’s become kind of a holy grail to urban planners: young, educated, professionals like Abby Cook. They’re often willing to live in neighborhoods that other affluent people shun, and it seems, they love lofts. Julie Hale Smith is with Michigan’s housing development authority.


“Our main target goal was to increase population in our urban centers. When we looked around at other cities in the country that we were emulating, we noted that one of their linchpins of revitalization was the redevelopment of historic buildings or the kind of faux-lofting of new, or newer buildings to provide that kind of lifestyle, that kind of urbanist lifestyle for folks that chose to live in those kinds of dwellings.”


You hear the word “lifestyle” a lot when you talk about lofts. In fact, they’ve become almost synonymous with a certain lifestyle, and not just in the minds of developers and urban planners.


FLAHERTY: “When you think of loft apartments, what words do you think of?”


PERSON 1: “Urban living.”


PERSON 2: “Maybe urban contemporary types, younger…”


PERSON 3: “Young, urban, hip.”


PERSON 4: “Maybe en vogue for city living, kind of stylish…”

But what is it about lofts? Doug Kelbaugh’s the dean of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan.


“Lofts have a certain cache… they started in London and New York, where older manufacturing buildings or warehouses, in the case of London, were converted by urban pioneers, often artists, into large, open spaces, typically without separate rooms, and now it’s become sort of a lifestyle issue.”


But luxury lofts like Union Square are a far cry from the gritty artists’ lofts of 1970’s New York. They often have amenities like pools, gyms and game rooms.


“What will happen, is you’ll come up this stairway – there’ll be a landing here – and then there’ll be a second stairway that goes up through the roof to your private rooftop deck…”


Developers often like to call any apartment with big windows and exposed brick a “loft.” University of Illinois Geographer, David Wilson, says it’s all a matter of marketing, that developers aren’t just selling an apartment, they’re selling an identity.


“Developers and builders look at them and they see certain physical attributes: high ceilings, large, expansive windows, and so forth, and they seize upon the idea of marketing these physical attributes. And the marketing process hooks up to the notion of, ‘Let’s play to the identity of these people. Let’s make them appealing, let’s make them attractive.'”


So when people see apartments that look like lofts, they don’t think about washing those big windows, they think of having the hip, urban lifestyle that the windows imply. Take Hannah Thurston. She’s a 23-year-old student. She and her husband are putting down a deposit on one of the Union Square apartments.


“I’m hoping that the other people moving in will be great neighbors. Obviously, we’ll have a lot in common being young professionals, obviously there are a lot of nice perks.”


But whatever developers’ motivations, and whatever people might think of them, lofts are succeeding at one thing: they’re bringing at least some new people many of the nation’s abandoned city centers.


For the GLRC, I’m Nora Flaherty.

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Heirloom Seeds Preserved in Gardens

  • The produce we see in stores today are bred for uniformity in color and size. Heirloom seeds grow vegetables that look different, and those who grow them say they taste better too. (Photo by Deon Staffelbach)

Planting a seed has a pretty obvious purpose: once you put it in the ground, if you’re lucky, a few weeks later something pretty or useful pops up. But for some people, seeds are a lot more than that. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:

Transcript

Planting a seed has a pretty obvious purpose: once you put it
in the ground, if you’re lucky, a few weeks later something pretty
or useful pops up. But for some people, seeds are a lot more than
that. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has this report:


Greenfield Village is a historical village that’s part of the Henry Ford
Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The village has one of those “living history”
farms where people do things like shearing sheep and chopping wood, while
dressed in 19th century clothing.


They try hard to make the farm authentic,
and part of this has to do with the seeds they plant — they’re the very same
kinds that 19th century farms in this part of the country would have used.
They’re called heirloom seeds. Jim Johnson is the manager of special
programs at Greenfield Village. He says that the vegetables that heirloom
seeds produce aren’t what people are used to seeing.


“They’re lumpy and bumpy and sometimes have a strange look to them, but some of these varieties have a taste that cannot be compared to the things you can find on the supermarket shelves today. Most of the things you can find today in the standard produce section, they’re grown to be uniform, they look appealing to the eye, but typically they don’t have a very good taste and have been around for a while.”


Johnson says that it’s important to use seeds that are authentic. That’s
because what people plant, can show a lot more about them than just what
they eat. Laura Delind is an anthropologist at Michigan State University;
she says that even the names of seeds, can say a lot about a group. She
points to a seed grown by traditional farmers in Africa, that has a much
more telling name than what you’d see on a seed packet at your local
hardware store.


“It grew at a time when a majority of other beans didn’t. And what I found compelling is the seed was called ‘So the Grandparents Can Survive.’ Inherent in the seeds is a whole set of social relationships, responsibilities, cultural understandings, and a collective wisdom about how to manage, live well in a particular place.”


Delind says that in the U.S. we’ve lost a lot of this. But for many people, growing heirlooms isn’t just a thing of the past or something that people do in far-off countries.


Heirloom gardening has become more popular in recent years. In part that’s
because of the taste. It’s also because people have become more concerned
about commercially developed seeds, which are sometimes genetically
modified. Royer Held offers classes about heirloom seeds. He says that
planting, saving and sharing heirloom seeds, are important for a lot of
reasons, especially now when the food we eat comes from fewer and fewer
places.


“People are giving up the cultivation of these varieties they’ve maintained over centuries and millenia. We’re basically at risk of losing a lot of very unique agricultural material. And what we’re trying to do here in Ann Arbor is to encourage the gardening community here to take on as their personal responsibility the maintenance of these varieties.”


Although Royer Held is a long-time gardener, he can’t say that he’d given
that much thought to spreading the word about heirlooms until a couple of
winters ago. When bad weather kept him inside, he passed the time reading.
In one book he found that that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, kept
supplies of lots of heirloom seeds that weren’t widely available.


He requested several kinds of potato seeds from the agency. When they arrived
he and his friend Marcella Troutman planted them along with some other
heirloom seeds. They saved the seeds and cuttings from the new plants, and
now they’re making these available as well as trying to get people used to
the idea of saving their own seeds. She says that people can be a little
intimidated by the idea.


“They almost think it’s not going to be as good as having bought seeds in a packet from a reputable seed company.”


She hopes that in time, people will get over this. Royer Held adds that saving seeds and sharing them with your friends are all part of what makes gardening rewarding.


“If you grow heirlooms, you should save the seeds, because it’s only by saving the seeds that you can allow the plants to grow and develop and adapt to particular growing conditions. And if you do, save enough for your friends because they might want some too. And if they take time, they’ll probably wind up liking them better, which gets us back to why we all garden.”


They hope that in the end, people will get comfortable enough to start creating and sharing their own varieties.


For the GLRC, I’m Nora Flaherty.

Related Links

Honda’s Soybean Solution Encourages Non-Gmo Farming

  • Honda is well known for its cars, but might soon be known as number one in non-GMO soybean exports. (Photo by Simon Cataudo)

Most people associate Honda with cars and motorcycles. But the company has an interesting sideline: as a cost-saving measure, they’ve been exporting soybeans from the U.S. to Japan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has more:

Transcript

Most people associate Honda with cars and motorcycles. But the company has
an interesting sideline: as a cost-saving measure, they’ve been exporting
soybeans from the US to Japan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora
Flaherty has more:


Honda started exporting the beans as a way to reuse the huge cargo
containers that would arrive at the plant filled with auto parts. Instead of
sending them back empty, they wanted to fill the containers with something that
they could sell, and soy beans were a good fit. Joe Hannisik is the manager
of the plant, called Happy Ohio, where the beans are processed for shipping.


“We basically contract production with about 250 to 280 farmers in Ohio and
southern Michigan, for contract production, back to Happy Ohio, for processing and shipment of
soybeans primarily to Japan the majority of them.”


Honda only buys beans that haven’t been genetically modified, because that’s
what the Japanese prefer. And Honda pays farmers a higher price for their
beans than they’d get on the open market. Hannisik says that this can make a
difference when farmers are making decisions about whether to plant
genetically modified seeds.


For the GLRC, I’m Nora Flaherty.

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Restaurants Serve Up Less Waste

When you go to your favorite restaurant, you might not realize how many carrot tops, onion peels and potato scrapings end up in the garbage. In the past, most of that has gone into landfills, but one community is trying to change that by running a pilot restaurant composting program. It hopes to serve as a model for other communities throughout the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty reports:

Transcript

When you go to your favorite restaurant, you might not realize how many carrot tops, onion peels
and potato scrapings end up in the garbage. In the past, most of that has gone into landfillS, but one
community is trying to change that by running a pilot restaurant composting program. It hopes to
serve as a model for other communities throughout the region. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Nora Flaherty reports:


Rene Graff tries to run her restaurant in the most environmentally sound way she can. But there
was one thing – she couldn’t do anything with all the peels, rinds and other vegetable waste that her
cooks generated. Her staff suggested composting, but it wasn’t practical to set up a compost pile in
back where it might attract pests. And it wasn’t practical for someone in the restaurant to take the
stuff away.


“The city didn’t have a compost program where they could pick it up, and as a business, you really
couldn’t have somebody driving the waste out to the compost center, so that was a really big
obstacle for us, was having pick-up.”


Graff started talking to people in her town, Ann Arbor, Michigan. They talked about ways to work
it out so that her restaurant, and others, could compost their food preparation waste. Then they all
found out that the Solid Waste Department had been thinking about the same thing. They all
worked together, and in the end, they put together a program where for 2 months, three local
restaurants separated all of their waste from prepping vegetables, along with coffee grounds and
filters, for the city’s yard waste trucks to pick up.


(kitchen sound – chopping)


They found it was easier than they thought it would be. Emily Adkison manages the kitchen at
Graff’s restaurant, The Arbor Brewing Company. She helped create the system that they used for
food prep composting.


“We would have several bins, one at every station, one at the prep area, one up back on the line,
one right over there by the dish area so the servers can put their used napkins in and coffee
grounds. It’s just as easy as having, instead of a garbage can, you have a 5-gallon pickle bucket
and you throw your scraps in there instead of in the garbage.”


The stuff that the workers throw in the buckets gets picked up by the city’s yard waste composting
trucks. Then, it’s taken to Ann Arbor’s Materials Reclamation Facility, or MRF.


The MRF is a huge, windswept area, with a big population of crows and big, long piles of partially-
decomposed leaves everywhere, emitting a lot of steam and a very earthy smell. Nancy Stone is
educational director for the Solid Waste Department. It’s her job to show people what happens to
their yard and now, food waste, once they’ve sent it here. The whole process takes about a year.
The end result is a high-quality compost, that the city sells to local farmers and gardeners.


“It’s rather crumbly in nature. It has a very sweet smell to it and it looks to me like beautifully
ground espresso grounds. It’s just, I like to garden myself. This is the best stuff to garden with.
This stuff is the best stuff to think of putting on that garden.”


The Ann Arbor restaurant compost pilot program ran for 2 months, and in that time, the city
collected 9 tons of stuff that would have been thrown away otherwise. For Graff, whose restaurant
alone generated one ton of food waste, this is a big argument for future programs, and against
people who say that this kind of program is too small to work:


“When I’m dealing with nay-sayers, the biggest thing they say, ‘if it’s such a small amount that
you’re talking about, is it worth the time, is it worth the effort?’ and I think what people should
know is that every little bit counts, as in I think we were shocked to discover that we diverted a ton
of waste in 2 months, and I would say yes, even the smallest little gesture can have a big impact,
especially if everybody’s doing it.”


And more restaurants will be doing it in the spring — the program is starting up again in May, this
time with 3 more partners. And the people involved in the Ann Arbor program hope that if it works
in this community, it will help lead to a change in the way that other communities, all over the
region, deal with food waste.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Nora Flaherty.

Researchers Study Migrant Labor Force

In the last three decades, Mexican produce workers have become more important to the economy of the Midwest than ever before, but most of the people who buy and eat fruits and vegetables rarely hear about them. Now, researchers in the region are beginning to take a closer look at the lifestyles of some of these workers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has more:

Transcript

In the last three decades, Mexican produce workers have become more important to the
economies of the Great Lakes region than ever before, but most of the people who buy
and eat fruit and vegetables rarely hear about them. Now, researchers in the region are
beginning to take a closer look at the lifestyles of some of these workers. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty reports:


Many of the workers who pick and pack tomatoes in the Great Lakes region aren’t from
the region. In Canada, thousands of them are workers brought from Mexico as part of
Canada’s Foreign Agriculture Resource Management Services program. These workers
come from Mexico for 4 to 6 months a year, and can make in an hour what they would
make in a day at home, but the work in Canada is hard, and the days are long.


Deborah Barndt is a professor of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto:


“Often it’s an 11 hour workday, 6 and a half days a week because they’re here primarily
to make money to support their families back home, and they have no other responsibilities,
no other commitments, no community or family connections.”


Barndt says that workers in Canada make minimum wage. They get
insurance and Canadian pensions, but don’t qualify for unemployment. She also says that
their numbers have increased, as Mexico’s economy has worsened.


For the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium, I’m Nora Flaherty.

New Technique for Auto Emissions Testing

More and more cities and states in the Great Lakes region are testing for auto emissions in a new way: they’re asking the cars themselves. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty reports:

Transcript

More and more cities and states in the Great Lakes region are testing for auto emissions in a new way: they’re asking the cars themselves. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty reports:


In the past, emissions testing mostly involved looking at cars’ tailpipe exhaust. But experts say that testing using newer cars’ on-board diagnostic systems can be much more useful. That’s because these systems are always testing the car in all driving conditions. They monitor more systems in the car. And they can even alert drivers to a problem before testing, lighting up the “check engine” light on the dashboard. John Mooney is with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says that on-board diagnostic testing is becoming common throughout the country:


“At this point 11 states have programs up and running. We’re expecting nine more states to come online this year, and 13 more states to follow within the next couple of years. So we’re gonna see a lot more of these programs in the future.”


The cities of Chicago and Milwaukee already require onboard diagnostic testing. Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, New York and Ohio are scheduled to start statewide programs in the next two years.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Nora Flaherty.