Week 6 Food Reflection

This week I wanted to reflect on food access and how planners have played a role in the “supermarketization” of our food systems, well at least the majority of those occurring in urban settings. When I first learned about planning, the definition of it that I carried with me and gave to family members interested in my studies was that planners were people who created urban designs that enhance the sustainability, livability, and overall growth of a city. Plans that exclusively place better food infrastructure away from low income areas and instead nearer to suburbs and higher income areas create factors that contribute to food insecurity and public health issues. These plans that planners have been enforcing does not coalesce with the definition of planning I am now fond of. 

All of this reminds me of a grocery store that used to be down the street from the apartment complex (more like a ghetto then but the area is better now) where one of my aunt’s used to live. It was like a farmer’s market, it sold fruits and vegetables mainly, and my mother took me and my sister there all the time to get watermelon, fresh grapes, and peaches. I remember being about twelve when the place closed down, and looking back now, I can’t help but feel that it closed because of the economic situation of the area, similar what we have been studying in class with the formation of food deserts. The loss of that grocery created a huge gap in the consumption of healthy food for the residents of that area. I feel that planners need to work with food assessment tools as well as map making to pin point areas in a city that are subject to food insecurity and being food deserts/swamps, so they may formulate plans that help these distressed areas.