As an urban planning academic teaching a course on food justice, I am aware that this inequality is due in large part to design. For more than a century, urban planning has been used as a toolkit to maintain the white supremacy that has divided American cities along racial lines. And this has contributed to the development of so-called ‘food deserts’ – areas with limited access to reasonably priced, healthy, culturally relevant food – and ‘food swamps’ – places with a preponderance of shops selling ‘fast’ and ‘junk’. food.
Both terms are controversial and have been disputed for ignoring both the historical roots and the deeply racial nature of access to food, leaving white communities more likely to have sufficient availability of healthy, reasonably priced produce.
Instead, food justice scholar Ashanté M. Reese suggests the term “food apartheid.” Food apartheid, according to Reese, is “intimately linked to policies and practices, current and historical, that stem from a place of anti-blackness.”
Regardless of what they are called, these areas of unequal food access and limited options exist. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that 54.4 million Americans live in low-income areas and have poor access to healthy food. For city dwellers, this means they are more than half a mile from the nearest supermarket.
More expensive, fewer options
The development of these areas with limited healthy food options has a long history associated with urban planning and housing policy. Practices such as redlining and yellowlining – in which the private sector and the government conspired to limit mortgage lending to black and other minority homebuyers – and racial agreements that restricted rental and sale of property to whites only meant that poor areas were concentrated along racial lines .
Additionally, homeowners’ associations that refused entry to black people in particular and federal housing subsidies that have largely gone to white, wealthier Americans have made it more difficult for people living in lower-income areas to move or amass wealth. It also leads to city blight.
This is important when considering access to food, as retailers are less willing to move to poorer areas. A process of “supermarket redemption” has led to larger supermarkets either refusing to move to lower-income areas, closing existing outlets or moving to wealthier suburbs. The thinking behind this process is that as pockets in a city get poorer, they become less profitable and more prone to crime.
Scientists also say there is a cultural bias among major retailers against placing outlets in minority areas. Speaking of why supermarkets fled the New York borough of Queens in the 1990s, then Consumer Affairs Commissioner Mark Green put it this way: “First, they may be concerned that they don’t understand the minority market. stupid premise that blacks are poor, and poor people are a bad market. “
In the absence of larger supermarkets, less healthy food options – often at a higher price – have taken over in low-income areas. Research of food providers in New Haven, Connecticut in 2008 found “significantly worse average product quality” in lower-income neighborhoods. Meanwhile, a 2001 New Orleans study found that fast food density was higher in poorer areas, and predominantly black neighborhoods had 2.5 fast food restaurants for every square mile, compared to 1.5 in white areas.
‘Whole Foods and Whole Food Deserts’
Geographer Nathan McClintock conducted a detailed study of the causes of Oakland’s food deserts in 2009. Although limited to one California city, I believe what he found is true of most American cities.
McClintock describes how the development of racially segregated areas in the interwar years and the realignment of policies thereafter led to concentrated areas of poverty in Oakland. Meanwhile, in the late 1950s by the then all-white Oakland City Council to build major highways that cut through the city, the decisions in the late 1950s mainly isolated Black West Oakland from downtown Oakland.
The net effect was an outflow of capital and a white run into the affluent neighborhoods of Oakland Hills. Black and Latino neighborhoods were deflated.
This, along with the advent of suburban Oakland supermarkets accessible by car in the 1980s and 1990s, led to a shortage of fresh food in predominantly black neighborhoods such as West Oakland and Central East Oakland. What remained, McClintock concludes, is a “crude mosaic of parks and pollution, privileges and poverty, Whole Foods and entire food deserts.”
Urban planning as a solution
Food disparities in American cities have a cumulative effect on people’s health. Research has linked them to the disproportionately poor diet of Black and Latino Americans, even after adjusting for socioeconomic status.
While urban planning was part of the problem, it could now be part of the solution. Some cities have started to use planning tools to increase food equity.
Minneapolis, for example, as part of its 2040 plan, aims to “establish a fair distribution of food resources and food markets to provide all Minneapolis residents with reliable access to healthy, affordable, safe and culturally appropriate food.” To achieve this, the city is reviewing city plans, including examining and implementing regulatory changes to enable and promote mobile food markets and mobile food pantries.
My hometown of Boston is in a similar process. In 2010, the city began establishing an urban farming overlay district in the predominantly Black and Latino borough of Dorchester, changing zoning plans to allow commercial urban farming. This change has provided employment for the locals and food for local cooperatives, such as the Dorchester Food Coop, as well as restaurants in the area.
And this could be just the beginning. My students and I contributed to Boston mayoral candidate Michelle Wu’s Food Justice Agenda. It includes provisions such as a formal process in which private developers should work with the community to ensure space for diverse food retailers and commercial kitchens, and licensing restrictions to discourage the proliferation of fast food restaurants in poorer areas. If Wu is chosen and the plan carried out, it would, in my opinion, provide more equitable access to nutritious and culturally appropriate food, 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 that “nutritious, affordable and culturally relevant food is a universal human right.”
Julian Agyeman iis professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.
Disclosure Statement: Julian Agyeman does not work for, consult, own stock or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has not disclosed any relevant affiliations outside of their academic appointment.
Reposted with permission from The Conversation.
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