Understanding the Complexity of Detroit’s Food Environment: Access, Justice, and Social Change

• In Event: 083 - Section on Environment and Technology Paper Session. Open Topic 1

Abstract

This paper takes a new approach to studying food access, by blending environmental justice analysis with systems thinking in order to examine the food environment of Detroit. The paper reviews the food access literature and identifies how the underlying assumptions of each body of scholarship help or distort our understanding of urban food environments. The paper argues for more comprehensive approaches to studying food access and demonstrates how this can be done. We collected data from multiple sources to build a database of food outlets in the city. The paper analyzes the location of 3,495 food outlets in Detroit. This includes analysis of 34 categories food retailers, growers, supply chain, and food assistance programs. The study found 83 supermarkets or large grocery stores; 1,117 small groceries, convenience stores, mini marts, and liquor stores; 279 specialty food stores; 307 pharmacies, dollar and variety stores; 1,245 full-service and fast food restaurants and other food service; 158 supply chain operations; 206 farms, community and school gardens, farmers’ markets, and produce markets; and 100 food assistance programs. The paper finds that though Detroit has areas that lack food outlets, the portrayal of the city as a food desert does not hold up under scrutiny. Moreover, the traditional approach of studying food access primarily uses the presence or absence large grocery stores, ignoring many important venues from which people obtain food. It also ignores the strategies people use to cope with food insecurity and the responses they make when food access is limited.

Authors

• Dorceta E. Taylor, University of Michigan

• Kerry Ard, The Ohio State University