Before Justice, Access

Gottleib and Joshi's chapter on "Accessing Food," as a function of food justice and injustice at large, was, to me, the most relevant reading pertaining to planners. It especially important to understand the formation of what has become known as food justice, but for practicing planners it is arguably most important to devise methods to create access and opportunity to food. In doing so, there are many considerations, including the transportation definition of "access"--i.e. how to physically reach something and provide opportunity through movement by walking, bicycling, transit, or personal vehicle. Then there is also the definition of "access" in terms of social standards. That is, integrating equitable food opportunities with the existing culture and economic status of an area. Otherwise, a mismatch will occur where residents may have a source of healthy foods, but the price point is out of reach.


Although as planners we might not be planning for grocery stores very often, we have to consider the effects of any kind of new development--commercial or residential--on the food system at large. Does the proposed development enhance or limit access to existing or planned groceries? Keeping track of all of the moving parts of our built environments is a necessary holistic exercise in any form of planning. Hence the importance of this specific chapter to the planning field.


In reading Gottlieb and Joshi's analysis, it occurred to me that although we have food deserts, food swamps, and "grocery gaps," we do not have any form of food access index that the authors allude to in the text (p. 40-41). They speak of a pseudo-index performed by researchers in Los Angeles that was very specific to their research. Perhaps an all-encompassing index can be formed with this as a starting point. Cities and neighborhoods can be assigned a score that standardized value based on the distance needed to travel to access healthy foods, the number of stores in that particular area, etc. While mapping food deserts has done basically just that, by assigning a value to each location allows for an easier comparison of areas. Say, Chicago is a 68 on the FAI Scale, while Los Angeles is an 81, to reflect that Los Angeles' food crisis is more severe than Chicago's. A unified measure of this phenomenon could improve reporting on food justice and become a widespread tool for researchers, planners, politicians, and consumers the like.


I'd like to bring attention to one additional point made by Gottlieb and Joshi in this particular chapter. In the section "Supersizing Supermarkets," the authors begin using the term "food retail," which feels like a repetition of the broader food systems theme throughout the course that has stuck with me the most. From week to week, with each reading, discussion, and reflection, the content seems to circle around the corporatization of our food system. I think that by identifying the phenomenon with the term "food retail" does a great justice to what the system actually is. Food, which is a substantive, necessary form of human survival, has transitioned from necessity to artisan to manufactured--in terms of quality and production. One of the best examples I can think of Wal-Mart, who has juxtaposed very unlikely things under one roof and applying the same business model and product treatment to both. It is the crux of the commercialization of food, and epitomizes the preponderance of today's broken food systems.