halaisflav’s Blog

For this one I actually used to sets of data: one spreadsheet with the number of deaths per year and another with the defense spending.

urban-agriculture

The Alligator piece uses sound as a background to reinforce the pictures. This helps us get a better sense of the atmosphere of the scene. I think the pictures are still the main element, but getting sound at the same time definitely adds a lot.

The New York Times piece uses sound as an integral element. The narration brings a lot of  that are crucial to understand what the story is about. I’m not sure I like this way of using sound, though. I’m used to reading text at my own pace and style, and having a voice imposed on me felt a bit weird.

I think I’ll choose the first kind if sound for my piece, especially since the sound of gardening classes should be interesting.

Are you tired of wondering where your food comes from and whether it is safe to eat or not? Then grow your own!
The food production process has become an oddity to most urban dwellers. We take it for granted that food is available in large quantities in supermarket and it’s easy to forget what happened to these vegetables before they reached the shelves. But food production is coming back to the cities, with a surprising effect on community life.
Urban agriculture is nothing new. Examples can be found in ancient civilizations (the Machu Picchu in Peru, for example, had an elaborated system of terraces for that purpose.) In Canada, Victory gardens were created during the two World Wars to ensure a minimum of food production during hard economic times. Today, most cities have community gardens divided in lots for locals.
Urban gardens are usually used for economic purposes. Having a lot in a garden allows one to save a little bit of money on food each month. But as the world population grows, so does the number of urban poor. The United Nations estimate that 60 per cent of the world population will live in cities by 2030, and that most of the population growth will be in cities of the developing world.
Some of these cities are already witnessing major initiatives that allow locals to bring food production closer to them and therefore save money. In Havana, Cuba, where 80 per cent of the population lives in cities, an elaborated system of urban gardens was developed to get round economic restrictions. In Bangkok, Thailand, and Beijing and Shenzhen, China, massive projects have also been launched by NGOs or individuals in order to fight poverty.
In the past couple of years, urban gardening has garnered a different kind of supporters. In the western world, concerns over food security, chemical products and energy efficiency have prompted some members of the middle class to pay more attention to what is in their plates. Buying organic food isn’t enough for them anymore. They feel the need to be in complete control of the production of the food they eat by either buying directly from small local producers through farmers’ markets or even grow it themselves at home or in local community gardens. This movement reached unprecedented heights in the Fall of 2008, when over 85,000 people gathered in San Francisco to participate to the first Slow Food Nation event, which purpose was “to reflect the nation’s growing awareness of food culture and the implications of our food system.”
The growing interest for urban gardening and local food production hasn’t only allowed urbanites to be in control of what they eat. A side effect of this trend has been to bring people closer to each other, tighten community links and give a new lease of life to neighbourhoods. Lower and middle-classes have found a common interest in urban gardening, and food producers have re-established a connexion with consumers through farmers’ markets. In Montreal, the local association Greening Duluth is offering gardening classes to those living in the area of Duluth Street, and allows them to sell their food production during monthly farmers’ markets.
Urban agriculture is now reaching a new level by being integrated in urban planning. Whereas community gardens used to be merely tolerated by city governments who regarded them as a waste of space, urbanists and architects are now thinking of how to make food production part of the experience of living in a city. The most obvious example of this has been the creation of dozens of models of vertical farms, which are huge towers made of several layers of terraces in order to grow a maximum of food on a minimum of space. In Montreal, the Productive House is a housing project that integrates a small garden and an orchard to a few housing units. Other projects will certainly be created as oil and food prices continue to rise and the population will be seeking ways to cope with the economic crisis.
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Sources:

Working with urban farmers for food security

Farming goes vertical

Skyfarming

Sortie de crise: le modèle cubain

Slow Food Nation

Greening Duluth

Urban gardening

I found the course “Telling stories with sound” very complete. I really liked how it insisted on the preparation of the recording maybe more than the recording itself, how it showed in a very efficient way the characteristics of different microphones (this is something that I new but had never experienced;) it also explained the difference between natural and ambiat sound, which I didn’t know. I took the Advanced Radio course last year and this was a quick way to refresh what I had learned then, but it also allowed me to get a sense of how to put a longer piece together. I liked the sections where professional journalists give tips, I always find it very useful. The final section where the sound clips can be put together was a bit less useful. The clips had already been selected (that’s usually one of the hard parts of the job) and were not easy to move around.

I’ll definitely go back to the course and use it as a reference when I’ll be working with sound in my project.

I was very disappointed by “Yolanda’s Crossing” for several reasons. Yolanda’s story is very powerful but I felt this was not reflected in the use of multimedia. Recreating Yolanda’s journey on video wasn’t necessary, didn’t bring anything to the story and was ethically doubtful. This is a technique that is used in television, whereas the whole point of doing multiplatform stories is to be able to avoid the limitations of a single medium. Here, the images were not powerful enough and therefore they shouldn’t have been used.

The video lacked several details. Yolanda’s ordeal is supposed to have lasted for six years but this wasn’t clear. I would also have liked to see more graphics such as maps to locate more precisely the places she went to.

“Quenching Las Vegas’ thirst” is much more compelling. It is truly a multiplatform piece: it uses video, graphics, slideshows and articles. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the main animation, and the fact that elements at the bottom of the box appear in relation to the content of the video (the map at the bottom left and the “more info” section at the bottom right.) The quality of the videos are extremely good, which is very much appreciated. I also like the fact that new articles are still being added to the story.

The only negative criticism that I have about this story is that it is not well supported by my computer. I had difficulty watching all the videos because they would stop every now and then, and my web browser became very slow.

Secondary sources:

• “Urban gardening is looking up; Rooftop plots are just one way to ‘green’ city spaces,” MONIQUE BEAUDIN. The Gazette, 9 February 2009
• “Farms in the city win backing-but not pigs in the city,” Allison Hanes, National Post, Friday, February 06, 2009
• “Urban Farmers’ Crops Go From Vacant Lot to Market“, TRACIE McMILLAN, New York Times, May 7, 2008
• “Where Industry Once Hummed, Urban Garden Finds Success“, JON HURDLE, New York Times, May 20, 2008

Primary sources:

• Agriculture in Urban Planning – Generating Livelihoods and Food Security, Edited by Mark Redwood
• City Farmer News
• Grow Your Own

Interview sources:

Contacted sources:

• Cameron Stiff, project manager, Greening Duluth, 514-843-4356. Areas: gardening courses. Platforms: audio interview, photos.
• Paul Dwaine Fournier, Greenhouse coordinator, Concordia University, 514-848-2424 #5829. Areas: gardening, composting. Platforms: audio interview, video.
• Ismael Hautecoeur, project coordinator of the rooftop gardens and Caroline Tagny, International Internships coordinator, Alternatives, 514-982-6606. Areas: rooftop garden, internship program to learn about urban gardening in Cuba. Platforms: Audio interviews, photos, article.

Non-contacted sources:

• Dr Mark Gorgolewski, Dr June Komisar or Dr Joe Nasr, curators of the exhibition Carrot City: Designing for Urban Agriculture. Platforms: photos, article, audio interviews. The challenge is that the exhibition will take place in Toronto from Feb. 25. I might go to Toronto during reading week.
• An urban planner who will talk about how to integrate gardens in a city.
• Cindy Naas, author of urbangardencasual.com

Urban gardening is the new trend in Montreal. Evverywhere in the city, gardens are spreading on balconies, terraces and roofs. For those who are conscious about eating organic and local food, this is the way of controlling the production of their vegetables and herbs.

Urban gardening is already well established in Montreal in the form of community gardens, and it can be argued that this movement is only a revival of an older practice. But it is also part of a bigger movement that aims at reclaiming urban and public space. My goal is to look past the traditional community gardens to have a look at other forms of urban gardening. My multimedia story will aim at analyzing the movement and its origins, finding out what it reveals about Montreal and our society at large, and giving practical information to the public as to where to find gardening courses and how to start a garden at home.

I’ve been thinking about writing an article or doing a TV story on this for quite a while, but I’ve never had the opportunity to do it.

The neighbourhood association Greening Duluth, on the Plateau, has just started to offer gardening classes tailored to the city to prepare residents for the upcoming season. During the summer, they organize farmer markets so that residents can sell their product surplus.

The associaion Alternatives also offers gardening courses on the roofs of Montreal. Additionally, one of their internship programs allow each summer a few Montrealers to go to Cuba and learn more about urban gardening there.

The Productive House is a new housing project in the Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood in which the apartments were built according to energy-efficient principles. Residents share a rooftop garden as well as a small orchard. The project’s promoter hope that this type of housing will become a model for future urban developments.

Its target audience is young Montrealers (20-35 years-old,) students and professionals, who are conscious about the environment.

The story will include different multimedia elements:

• soundslides of gardening courses built with Soundslides or Vuvox
• sound clips of interviews with association leaders
• Soundslide presentation of an urban garden
• an article that will describe the urban gardening movement and its origins. It will look at other cities where the trend is well established (e.g. New York or San Francisco,) and analyze other trends to which it is connected (e.g. slow food, organic farming, local food.)

Getting original pictures will be difficult because of the winter situation, therefore I will rely on pictures previsouly taken by gardeners.