Designing for Sick Soil: Intervention on Remediating Sites for Land Use

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, approximately 19.4% of local residents lack consistent access to adequate food for a healthy and active life. About 63,000 of Pittsburgh locals struggle with food insecurity due to economical affordances and little transportation access (Danko+Day et al., 2020). Long distance commuting acts as physical boundaries which restrict one’s access to food. Additionally, residents who identify as ‘food insecure’ may face challenges of lacking the knowledge in healthy food preparation and heightening stressful conditions due to insubstantial opportunities for physical activities. Affordances of healthy food and access may be conditioned due to other necessary resources such as medical needs and housing (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 2019). Residents facing these challenges may either be racial minorities, seniors, students, disabled or those situated in low-income neighborhoods. For these following groups, the obstacles of time cost, travel, and dietary health options based on price are all burdens for those who cannot afford (Hartline-Grafton, 2015).