This morning I realized I didn't have a cubicle.

I spent a bit of time in a coffee shop, a bit of time in the library (no food or drinks allowed, so I ditched the coffee) and when I ran out of articles to enter in the database, I went back to swap out some.  I had a nice conversation with Nicole about why they were actually doing this research and why planners were interested.  It turns out that she had this bar chart from 10 years of articles with the words "chicken ordinance" in them, and in the last three years they had jumped exponentially.  What was even more shocking, there were no academic, comprehensive articles reporting on the two hundred or so articles in the last three years, as compared to 2006 where there were a grand total of 0. 

She talked a bit more about food insecurity and how chickens, like a community garden, though not communal, provide a good stepping stone for sharing eggs, getting together and talking about chickens and neighbors getting more interested in their neighbors.  Ellen expanded on that when I went to go see her, and she focused more on the availability of good vs. bad food.  She used a phrase "food desert" that she used to describe a generally depressed area with out access to the large grocery stores that we take for granted.  I was shocked to find that in the city of Detroit doesn't have big chain supermarkets, just conveinience stores and limited small grocers, with huge mark ups and limited fruits and veggies. 

After that, I went and sat in on a discussion with planners from New Zealand and Australia.  There were only about 5 other people there, and I got to meet another professor of urban studies.  He was shocked to find me still a high school student, but since I came from Catlin Gabel, it didn't count.  The planners were there in Portland to learn about us and how we have created a successful city.  They have the problem of too much sprawl and rampant inequality, so they were taking a tour around the best planned cities, as they called it, to learn what might be applicable to them. 

After lunch, I sat in on a lecture by a master's student (or the equivalent) from India.  She was part of a non-profit group of planners who recognize India's faults.  Her points that the main issue was that India was always playing a game of catch up, with the developers building first and the infrastructure coming later.  That is incredibly expensive and inefficient. 

By then, it was time to go home, and I got caught totally unprepared in the rain today.  My shoes got all soggy and riding the bus home wasn't fun at all. But at least I have two white fluffy puppies when I got home...