Week 7

            This weeks articles are studies that examine food security and accessibility given different factors such as income, race, economic development, culture, and mobility. In the “African Americans’ Access to Healthy Food Options in South Los Angeles Restaurants,” a study is done between a comparison group, which had zip codes with less African Americans and a target group with more. The comparison area was found to have more restaurants per resident with a difference in customer service offered and also had more places to eat at then the target area. In addition the comparison group was found to have better restaurant environments. This trend continues when discussing the health options and diversity of food. In regards to “Beyond Food Deserts,” research shows that although there are widespread restaurants throughout the city, the quality of food is not uniform. In addition, fewer supermarkets and more convenience stores were found within African American neighborhoods, as well as five times the amount of fruits and vegetables stores.

            The “Food Deserts, Oases, or Mirages?” study examined whether smaller food sellers helped community food security within a community. It found that although there were smaller food vendors with cultural specialties they tended to focus on one demographic to reap the most profit, so in a way it is helping the larger group of all the ethnic demographic groups in the area. Within ethnic demographics the “Mobility Strategies and Food Shopping for Low-Income Families,” finds that people have four modes of mobility: walking, carpooling, public transit, or buying a car. In addition, it finds that buying a car increases ones opportunity, self-dependency, and access. Altogether these articles explore topics readers may have had at some point in time, but weren’t sure of.

Week 7: Reflection on the access of food during my childhood

The Miami Dade metropolitan area is home to roughly 3 million individuals with a significant presence of minorities. In fact, non Hispanic whites make up close to only 20% of the population. I grew up in northeastern Miami-Dade, couple miles south of the county line that separates Broward county. The suburbs I resided in was called North Miami Beach, a city that dubbed their acronym to Now More Beautiful sometime in middle school. Compared to the rest of the county, North Miami Beach has a significant Jewish population as well as a Haitian population that ranks fifth among US cities. My mother did not drive, thus, she often would participate in public transportation, walk, or a combination of both depending on the location. Sometimes, this mean that she would have to take us with her to doctor appointments, school, shopping, and other means to live -- by bus.

The articles this week went into great detail concerning assessing food security, specifically in a spatial context in terms of racial disparities. Before they built Skylake Plaza that includes a Publix and daily community activities such as a gym, bank, McDonalds, nail salons, and etc less than a mile from our home, we had to walk along the creek 2 miles to go to the Publix that is no longer in existence to date. I remember complaining when I had to walk with my mom to do groceries because I knew that meant we would be carrying bags home. Amusingly, I recollect one of the readings stating that one of the environmental impacts of supermarkets were displaced carts. My mother eventually began taking the carts with her from Publix to alleviate the load off my younger brother and I. At the time, I use to blame the my mom's phobia of driving rather than considering how the community officials could have made implemented plans that considered food deserts.

Around 2006, the community's prayers were answered because a new Publix was built nearby along with new economic development occurring adjacently. In 2007, a Walmart SuperCenter arrived in North Miami Beach. I was amazed at the diversity of products, the vastness of the store (and definitely the parking lot, and most importantly: the price differences compared to Publix. My parents did not fail to realize the savings either and quickly changed their preferred SuperMarket of choice to WalMart, only going to Publix for weekly specials. My father would sometimes work long hours and my mother would have to cook for us. As a mother with no license she would take the responsibility of walking to Walmart to go grocery shopping since it was cheaper than Publix. The irony is the WalMart location was direcltly across the street of where the old Publix was 2 miles away!
(By the way, the old Publix Plaza was modified into McIntosh Park and Soccer Field, a popular facility in the community)

My mom use to always wonder why the community never implemented a local short circuit bus route to accommodate the two primary shopping centers to the individuals in the community. The readings really bought back some good instances in my childhood where the shortcomings in the food systems affected myself and my family directly and indirectly. Nonetheless, mapping disparities to food access is a wonderful idea, however, I do not believe is should not be done in the context of race only because I believe food systems should be ubiquitous in their consumer needs. African Americans don't specifically need access to a bananas, apples, and oranges, humanity needs bananas, apples, and oranges. Thus, in terms of environmental justice, where people live in a community, there shall be real food for them to eat.

Week 7

Growing up in Fort Myers, Florida my experience with food access in security shifted significantly. The neighborhood my family lived in was a mixture of Hispanic and African Americans. I can recall that many of grocery stores where located just north of my neighborhood, many of which were locally owned.  The locally owned stores where forced to close as chained stores, like Publix and Win-Dixie were located within 3 miles on this stretch road north of my neighborhood. Recently these stores have moved outside of this centralized location and opened new stores in more affluent neighborhoods. This recent shift, has turn what was primarily accessible food to forcing man people to travel longer distances. In this week’s reading food deserts and accessibility where viewed critically from a spatial and mobile perspective. Considering how heavily auto dependent many cities are, I like Clifton, feel as though there should be more emphasis on spatial development within neighborhoods that provide many modes of transportation and access to healthy food. 

Food Security: There's No Easy Solution

It is difficult to pen a personal reflection on food security and justice when you have never experienced insecurity or injustice. I consider myself fortunate to have never "wanted" for food or any other resource. Granted the closest I've come is being your average "broke" college student and I once lived off PB&Js, but that cannot and will not ever compare to being insecure or the victim of injustice. As a planner, it seems just as insensitive to think I can enter a community I'm not a part of and attempt to "fix" their system. Certainly, in the context of food insecurity/injustice, deserts, and swamps there is a need, but it is very easy to tend towards gentrification, which even farther from the goal of bringing access and healthy solutions to fragile neighborhoods.


Perhaps a worthy approach to the delicate situation is a rational-oriented method. Conducting a neighborhood analysis or community food assessment (re: last week's readings) would be a useful tool to evaluate a community for various measures of performance, quality, etc. Likewise, GIS/mapping and spatial analysis is critical in examining how people move throughout their communities, interact with existing food stores, or how they have to travel to reach them. While all of this analytic research is meant to inform and evidence eventual action, there is also the consideration of policies at work that enable or hinder low income people from accessing commodities.


Programs like food stamps and WIC provide a much needed service to low income individuals and families, but it may not be the answer for the future. That is not to say the programs should be cut, but more sustainable, long-term, and multifaceted action should be pursued. Instead of putting a band-aid on issues (i.e. providing fiscal support for specific goods), we should look more at the systemic, institutional causes for a solution. Economic studies looking at where families/individuals allocate their money indicate rent and food as the most important. Perhaps if we work to de-stigmatize public housing and incentivize private investment in its development to make housing more affordable, to alleviate some of the strain placed on lower income households. Similarly, the price of foods is highly variable because of the controversy surrounding oil. More sustainable, renewable practices won't take effect for a long time, which also makes this issue inherently ecological, as well as highly political. Until we reach that plateau as a society, food stamp programs are the best way to bring food to people in need. However, if we plan to alleviate and resolve food security and justice, we must treat the issue comprehensively and systematically.

Week 7: Food Deserts

Last year, I attended a Sustainability Summit put together by Leon County as a way of joining people together on the issue of food. It was a great event with guest speakers from the community and beyond. A hot topic at the event was "food deserts" and how we need to close the gap in our communities in  Tallahassee to make healthy food more accessible. However, one of the speakers, Karen Washington brought up that what's even more important than addressing frequency of food stores is focusing on the nutritional quality of the foods available. She noted that for a lot of families in low socioeconomic communities, just having vegetables and fruit is a huge step rather than fixating on immediately bringing in organic, local food that may not even be an economically possibility.

I thought about this as I read this week's articles and was impressed by the awareness of the authors as to the needs of the communities in question. For example, in the article "Beyond Food Deserts- Measuring and Mapping Racial Disparities in Neighborhood Food Environments" the authors pointed out that although major media likes to portray food deserts as completely devoid of any food options whatsoever, the communities of Erie County, New York actually did have food options. They may not have major super markets, but they have a network of smaller locally owned markets. Although they didn't have major brand-name supermarkets, they had culturally appropriate stores run by their community members, The authors honed in on four major ways of identifying a food desert: quality, scale, urban form, and diversity.

In the articles "Mobility Strategies and Food Shopping for Low Income Families" and "Food Deserts, Oases, or Mirages?" the authors defined the relationships between mobility constraints and assessments on how food retailers contribute to urban food security. The final article, "African Americans’ Access to Healthy Food Options in South Los Angeles Restaurants," gave a thorough description of the opportunities for African Americans to eat healthy, safely, and happily at restaurants in South Los Angeles. The results for this showed that the more African Americans living in an area, the less healthy options there were for people looking to eat away from home. A lot of these issues seem to derive from their environment, but the result is that disease associated with poor diet is going to more greatly affect people of color in less affluent areas.

Car Culture

[Week 7: Reflection]

When I first moved to Rio Piedras, PR in 2011, I didn’t have a car.  I remember the annoyance of grocery shopping, which required a bus and/or subway ride to the nearest grocery and walking the sidewalk-less streets from the subway station to the supermarket.  Once, I tried going to a specialty store that sold "natural foods" which was about a three-hour roundtrip, including walking, train, and bus.  That, as well as the price ($7 for a "ecological" loaf of bread), discouraged me from ever returning there.

Generally, I could only buy what I could carry.  Once, I remember making a particularly large purchase, trying to reduce the amount of times I went grocery shopping.  Even after consolidating the bags (the supermarkets always seemed to put only 1-2 items in each bag, which they then double-bagged), I still struggled with both arms and a backpack laden down with heavy groceries.  By the time I waddled to the station, through the barriers, and onto the train, it was already dark.  I rushed out of the subway when I reached my stop, but soon realized I had exited through the wrong entrance.  Instead of coming out next to the university and a block away from my apartment building, I had landed straight in the “danger zone” -- the area everyone avoided at night.  And sometimes during the day as well; I once saw a woman get robbed there in daylight.  Another time (at night), I saw a car on fire in the Burger King parking lot from my apartment window.  It took the cops 30 minutes to get there, even though the police station was less than a mile away.  All this in mind, I quickly covered the remaining distance between the train stop and my building, trying not to pay attention to the half-hidden men staring from the shadows.  

Reading this week’s articles, I realized how little I think about transportation when it comes to grocery shopping.  Now that I have a car, I rarely think about how I’m going to balance bags on my bike or factor in extra time to walk to/from the store.  In most of the cities where I’ve lived, it’s been incredibly difficult to get around without a car.  These articles reminded me that for many people, inconsistent or nonexistent transportation access for food purchases translates to huge investments in time and money that those who have reliable access to cars or live near easily accessible markets, do not have to face.  There may also be added safety implications, like lack of sidewalks or creepsters in the night, particularly for women who have to walk to the store after work hours.  At my last job, I often drove students home if an event ran late for this reason.  Some had to ride public transportation for up to two hours (one way) to return home.  After a certain hour, buses ran more infrequently and it would be dangerous to walk home from the bus stop by the time they reached their destination.

This week’s readings helped illustrate some of the concerns of travel to/from markets, as well as the role of planners in creating better transportation systems for food access.

Week 7 Blog

The readings this week address the issue of socioeconomic backgrounds and how they typically determine the quality of an individuals access to food. It seems as though when most people consider food deserts or areas where there is a clear distinction in the quality and diversity of the food available based on racial background that they take for granted just how bad some of the situations might be. Those who live in neighborhoods with limited grocery stores or stores that might not sell culturally appropriate food will also tend to be the people who don't have access to vehicles or other forms of transportation to healthier and more abundant sources of food. Even if these people had adequate access to better stores they might not be able to afford the healthier options based on the varying prices of produce and other healthy choices. While there are times where grocery stores may make an attempt to open a store in a lower income area, they typically close due to poor sales. This trend seems to be especially true in urban areas as prices of real estate might be higher and thus lead to an unsustainable business.
    There have been efforts to address community food issues, most of the time these come in the form of community groups and specifically community food assessments. These provide a clear look as to what communities may be lacking in terms of food security and how they may be helped. With the creation of these and with the help of planners these areas may be addressed and highlighted which can lead to further engagement within the community and by voulenteers to meet the proper needs of these people.