As an academic in urban planning, teaching a food justice course, I am aware that this difference is largely through design. For over a century, urban planning has been used as a toolkit for maintaining white supremacy, which has divided US cities along racial lines. And this has contributed to the development of so-called “food deserts” – areas with limited access to food at reasonable prices, healthy, culturally relevant – and “food swamps” – places with a predominance of stores that sell “fast ”And“ junk ”foods.
Both terms are controversial and have been challenged on the grounds that they ignore both the historical roots and the deeply racialized nature of access to food, whereby white communities are more likely to have sufficient availability of healthy products at reasonable prices.
Instead, food justice researcher Ashanté M. Reese suggests the term “food apartheid”. According to Reese, food apartheid is “intimately linked to current and historical policies and practices that come from an anti-black place.”
Whatever it is called, there are these areas of unfair food access and limited options. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 54.4 million Americans live in low-income areas with poor access to healthy food. For the inhabitants of the city, this means that it is more than half a kilometer from the nearest supermarket.
More expensive, fewer options
The development of these areas with limited healthy food options has a long history of urban planning and housing policies. Practices such as redlining and yellowlining – in which the private sector and government conspired to restrict mortgage lending to black home buyers and other minorities – and racial covenants restricting the rental and sale of white property only meant areas of poverty were concentrated racial lines.
In addition, homeowners’ associations that denied access to blacks in particular, and federal housing subsidies that reached mostly white and wealthier Americans, made it more difficult for people living in lower-income areas or to accumulate wealth. It also leads to urban deterioration.
This is important when looking at access to food, as retailers are less willing to go to poorer areas. A process of “supermarket downsizing” has seen larger grocery stores either refuse to move to lower-income areas or close existing outlets or move to richer suburbs. The thinking behind this process is that as the pockets of a city become poorer, they are less profitable and more prone to crime.
There is also, the researchers suggest, a cultural trend among large retailers against putting outlets in areas with a minority population. Speaking about why supermarkets were fleeing Queens, New York, in the 1990s, then-city commissioner Mark Green put it this way: “First of all, they may be afraid that they don’t understand the minority market. the strange premise that blacks are poor and poor people are a poor market. “
In the absence of larger grocery stores, less healthy food options – often at a higher price – have taken over in low-income areas. Research conducted by food vendors in New Haven, Connecticut in 2008 found “significantly lower average product quality” in lower-income neighborhoods. Meanwhile, a 2001 New Orleans study found that the density of fast food was higher in poorer areas and that predominantly black neighborhoods had 2.5 fast food points per square mile, compared to 1, 5 in the white areas.
“Whole foods and whole food desserts”
Geographer Nathan McClintock conducted a detailed study in 2009 on the causes of Oakland’s food deserts. Although it is limited to a California city, I think what he found is true for most cities in the US.
McClintock details how the development of racially segregated areas in the interwar period and reduction policies subsequently led to concentrated areas of poverty in Oakland. Meanwhile, decisions in the late 1950s by the then Oakland City Council to build major highways across the city effectively isolated Black West Oakland from downtown Oakland.
The net effect was an outflow of capital and a white flight to the affluent neighborhoods of Oakland Hills. Black and Latino neighborhoods have been drained of wealth.
This, along with the advent of car-accessible Oakland supermarkets in the 1980s and 1990s, led to a lack of fresh food outlets in predominantly black districts such as West Oakland and Central East Oakland. What remains, McClintock concludes, is a “raw mosaic of parks and pollution, privileges and poverty, whole foods and whole food deserts.”
Urban planning as a solution
Food disparities in US cities have a cumulative effect on human health. Research has linked them to the disproportionately poor diet of black and Latin American Americans, even after adapting to socioeconomic status.
As much as urban planning was part of the problem, it could now be part of the solution. Some cities have begun to use planning tools to increase food equity.
Minneapolis, for example, is part of its 2040 plan to “establish a fair distribution of food sources and food markets to provide all Minneapolis residents with safe access to healthy, accessible, safe and adequate food. cultural view ”. To achieve this, the city is reviewing urban plans, including exploring and implementing regulatory changes to enable and promote mobile food markets and mobile food pantries.
My hometown of Boston is engaged in a similar process. In 2010, the city began the process of establishing an urban agriculture coverage district in the predominantly black and Latino neighborhood of Dorchester, by changing the zoning to allow for commercial urban agriculture. This change provided jobs for locals and food for local cooperatives, such as Dorchester Food Coop, as well as restaurants in the area.
And this could be just the beginning. My students and I contributed to the Food Justice Agenda of Boston City Hall candidate Michelle Wu. It includes provisions such as a formal process in which private developers should work with the community to ensure that there is room for different retailers and commercial kitchens and licensing restrictions to discourage the proliferation of fast food outlets in poorer neighborhoods. . If Wu is chosen and the plan is implemented, I think it would 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, accessible 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, hold shares, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article and has not disclosed any relevant affiliation beyond their academic appointment.
Reposted with permission from The Conversation.
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