Cal Poly Pomona to host talk on the future of feeding cities

Where and how cities get their food is a topic of growing interest and importance world-wide. On Feb. 5, Cal Poly Pomona’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning will host two prize-winning guests who will shed light on this topic through a series of workshops, presentations and discussions.
The guests are this year’s winners of the department’s William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning. They are Heather Wooten of ChangeLab Solutions in Oakland, Calif., and Samina Raja, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo, Buffalo, N.Y.

The department awards the prize annually to both an urban and regional planning scholar and a practitioner. This year’s theme is We Are What We Eat: Food Systems and the Healthy City, which focuses on how planning can help cities better accommodate the production of food (urban agriculture); facilitate food distribution (farmers markets, food cooperatives); identify, map and address food deserts and other food security issues; and reclaim energy and nutrients in food waste. The goal is to link research and theory with practice.

Wooten is a leader and advocate for urban food systems. She is a senior planner and program director at ChangeLab Solutions in Oakland, where she researches best practices, develops tools, and works with communities to connect land use, economic development, and health. She is a co-author of How to Create and Implement Healthy General Plans, one of the premier publications on developing and implementing health policy language in land-use plans. Prior to joining ChangeLab Solutions, she co-authored the Oakland Food System Assessment: Towards a Sustainable Food Plan through the mayor's Office of Sustainability; she also serves on the Oakland Food Policy Council. Wooten graduated from University of Minnesota and received her master’s degree in city planning from UC Berkeley. 

Raja is the author of A Planners Guide to Community and Regional Food Planning: Transforming Food Environments, Facilitating Healthy Eating. She is the principal investigator of a $4 million USDA grant project entitled Growing Food Connections: Building Sustainable Food Systems through Local Government Policy and Planning. She established the Food Systems Planning and Health Communities Lab at the University at Buffalo and is a community leader on food issues. Her commitment to planning applications is reflected in her training activities on food with the American Planning Association. She serves on numerous food advocacy and interest groups.  Raja received her Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and holds a master’s degree in housing planning and bachelor’s degree in engineering.

During their visit to campus, the 2014 Dale Prize winners will interact with undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Environmental Design in numerous functions and workshops.

The public is invited to attend the Dale Prize Colloquium at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 5, at the Bronco Student Center. Wooten and Raja will discuss ways of improving urban food systems in short presentations and a moderated discussion. A 5 p.m. reception will precede the colloquium.  Both events are free. For more information, visit www.csupomona.edu/~urp/daleprize.