Cities and Urban Land Use

For Unit 7 of the AP Human Geography course I decided to use the article, “Salvation Army’s First Grocery Store Helps Baltimore’s Disadvantaged,” by Deborah Block. The article discusses how a charity called Salvation Army recently opened up a grocery store in a poor part of Baltimore. There were very few grocery stores in the area because many stores closed from the crime in the area and other factors like poverty. The Salvation Army decided to help out these people who didn’t have access to fresh produce or meats by building a grocery store called DMG Foods. The grocery store has lower than average prices which allows customers to buy more than they could at a chain grocery store such as Giant Eagle. The store also gives benefits to the customers such as every month the customers can pick one free item whether it be vegetables, light bulbs, or anything else the store has. All the profit the store makes is given to a local program called Catherine’s Cottage.

This article ties in with Unit 5 because there was a lack of food stores in Baltimore, which is an urban area, but luckily the Salvation Army helped out. I know that this topic is in the unit seeing that one of the Essential Knowledge statements for Enduring Understandings E states, “Economic and social problems associated with the growth and decline of urban communities include housing and insurance discrimination, housing affordability, access to food stores and public services…”. This would make these related because there was a social problem in a poor part of Baltimore that included a lack of fresh and healthy food that came from a lack of food stores. The people in that part of Baltimore had poor diets including fast food such as McDonalds which is a social problem and is extremely unhealthy for them and can lead to health problems.

I find this article interesting because I think it is great that there are charities such as this helping people. I feel that if you ever have the chance to help someone you should and that is exactly what the Salvation Army did. I think it is wonderful that these peoples’ lives are better than they were before. They now have access to fresh produce and meats which I believe is something everyone should have access to. This is the most positive article I have ever read and I believe more people and charities should do what the Salvation Army is doing by sacrificing their time to help others. I chose this article because lI love the idea of helping others and I believe it is always the right thing to do so I wanted to read about what the Salvation Army was doing. Another reason I chose it was because I had heard of the Salvation Army and knew they are a charity, but I didn’t know what they did so I read this article to learn about what type of projects they worked on. I also don’t know much about what areas where disadvantaged people live and this article taught me a bit about those areas which I found interesting. Therefore, I used the article, “Salvation Army’s First Grocery Store Helps Baltimore’s Disadvantaged,” for Unit 7.