As an urban planning academic who teaches a course on food justice, I am aware that this difference is largely through planning. For more than a century, urban planning has been used as a tool for maintaining white supremacy that has divided U.S. cities according to ethnicity. And this has contributed to the development of so-called “food deserts” – areas with limited access to healthy, culturally relevant foods at an affordable price – and “food bogs” – places with a majority of stores selling “fast” and “Junk” food.
Both terms are controversial and have been questioned because they avoid both the historical roots and the racist nature of food access, where white communities are more likely to have plenty of healthy, affordable products.
Instead, food justice scholar Ashanté M. Reese proposes the term “food apartheid.” According to Reese, food apartheid is “closely linked to policies and practices, both conventional and historical, that come from place who is against Blackness. “
Whatever they may be called, these areas of unstable food access and limited options exist. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 54.4 million Americans live in low-income areas with poor access to healthy food. For city residents, this means they are more than half a mile from the nearest supermarket.
More expensive, fewer options
The development of these areas of healthy eating choices has a long history of urban planning and housing policy. There were practices such as redesign and gratification – in which the private sector and the government objected to restricting mortgage lending to blacks and other home buyers – and racial contracts that restricted rental ownership and sales. to white people only meant that areas of poverty were based on racial lines.
In addition, homeowners’ associations that have denied access to black people in particular and federal housing subsidies that have largely gone to white, wealthier Americans have made it more difficult for people who living in lower-income areas moving out or getting rich. It also leads to urban blight.
This is important when looking at food availability as retailers are less willing to go into poorer areas. In a “supermarket redesign” process, larger grocery stores are either refusing to move into lower income areas, closing out centers or moving to areas. richer suburbs. The thinking behind this process is that, as pockets in a city become poorer, they become less profitable and more prone to crime.
There are also scholars, scholars suggest, a cultural bias among large retailers against outsourcing in minority areas. Discussing why supermarkets were fleeing Queens ‘New York city in the 1990s, the city’ s Consumer Affairs Commissioner then added: “At first they may be afraid that they understand the small market. But the second is their knee – jerk premise that Blacks are poor, and poor people like a poor market. “
Without greater grocery stores, less healthy food choices – often at a higher price – have taken over in low-income areas. A 2008 study among food suppliers in New Haven, Connecticut found “average product quality significantly worse” in lower-income neighborhoods. Meanwhile, a 2001 study of New Orleans found that fast food densities were higher in deprived areas, and that most black communities had 2.5 fast food places per square mile, compared to 1.5 in white areas.
‘Whole foods and whole food deserts’
Geographer Nathan McClintock conducted a detailed study in 2009 of the causes of Oakland food deserts. Although limited to one California city, I believe his findings are true for most U.S. cities.
McClintock details how the development of racially segregated areas in the interwar period and the subsequent redefinition of policies led to areas of severe poverty in Oakland. At the same time, decisions in the late 1950s by an all-white Oakland Town Council to build highways cutting through the city effectively separated Black West Oakland from Downtown Oakland.
The net effect was an outflow of capital and white flights to the wealthy Oakland Hills neighborhoods. Black and Latino neighbors were full of wealth.
This, combined with Oakland surburban supermarkets accessible by car in the 1980s and 1990s, led to a shortage of fresh foods in predominantly black areas such as West Oakland and Central East Oakland. What remains, McClintock concludes, is a “raw mosaic of parks and pollution, welfare and poverty, Whole food and whole food deserts.”
Urban Design as a solution
Food disparities in U.S. cities have a cumulative effect on human health. Research has linked them to an unbalanced diet of Black and Latino Americans, even after adjusting for socioeconomic status.
As urban planning has become part of the problem, it could now be part of the solution. Some cities have started using planning tools to increase food balance.
Minneapolis, for example, as part of its 2040 plan aims to “establish a fair distribution of food sources and food markets to provide Minneapolis residents with reliable access to healthy, affordable, safe and culturally appropriate food. ” To achieve this, the city is reviewing urban plans, including examining and implementing regulatory changes to encourage and promote mobile food markets and mobile food pantries.
My home in Boston is undergoing a similar process. In 2010, the city began a process of establishing a repurposed urban agriculture area in the Duchester and Latino-dominated area, by changing zones to allow commercial urban agriculture. This change has provided employment for local people and food for local colleagues, such as the Dorchester Food Coop, as well as local restaurants.
And this could be just the beginning. My students and I contributed to the Food Justice Agenda Michelle Wu, mayor of Boston. It includes provisions such as a formal process in which private developers must work with the community to ensure that there is space for diversified food retailers and commercial kitchens, and licensing restrictions to discouraging the growth of supermarkets in deprived areas. If Wu were elected and the plan implemented, it would, I believe, provide a fairer access to nutritious and cultural foods, good jobs and economically vibrant neighborhoods.
As Wu’s Food Justice Agenda notes: “Food justice means racial justice, requiring a clear understanding of how white supremacy has shaped our food systems” and to “nutritious, reasonably priced and culturally relevant food is a universal human right.”
Julian Agyeman iProfessor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.
Disclosure Statement: Julian Agyeman does not work for, consult on, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has not disclosed any relevant links. no further than their academic career.
Posted with permission from the Conversation.
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