Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield Neighborhood Gets Its Turn To Become New Hot Spot

Locator map with the Bloomfield neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania highlighted. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Stability has been one of Bloomfield‘s strengths. During the East End’s worst years of blight and crime, Bloomfield went about its business while other neighborhoods got triage.

The drawback was being ignored.

Lawrenceville, Garfield and East Liberty came out of the mire with high-capacity staffs of community development nonprofits, while the Bloomfield Development Corp. morphed out of a merchants’ association with one staff person, Karla Owens, who left in 2012.

Now the Bloomfield Development Corp. is coming around the track on the inside, ready to assert the neighborhood’s presence with six years of funding, a new executive director and positive trends afoot.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2013/12/09/Bloomfield-gets-its-turn-to-become-new-hot-spot/stories/201312090037#ixzz2n0C960do

Community Gardens Not Only Provide Good Nutrition, But Also The Perfect Exercise

When working in community gardens, participants reap what they sow and more.

A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Utah showed that the health benefits of a community garden go far beyond the fresh fruits and vegetables added to your diet.

After studying the body mass index data of 198 community gardeners and their same-sex siblings, spouses and neighbors, researchers found they had lower BMIs than their non-gardening counterparts.  They were also less likely to be obese or overweight.

When a gardener’s BMI, a measure of body fat, was compared to their non-gardening spouse’s BMI, the researchers found no discernible difference.  This led them to conclude that the spouses were benefiting from the harvested food and possibly helped out in the garden.  Results were reported April 18 in the American Journal of Public Health.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/community-gardens-not-only-provide-good-nutrition-but-also-the-perfect-exercise-699885/#ixzz2cRI9PsMr