Community Resources in a Diverse City: Supermarket Location and Emerging Racial Hierarchies

• In Event: 457 - Regular Session. Space and Place II

Abstract

Disparities in resources are pronounced along racial/ethnic lines in the United States. Convention draws our attention to divisions between blacks and whites, but increased racial/ethnic diversity in the United States requires shifts in that focus. We contribute to conversations regarding emerging racial/ethnic hierarchies by assessing the association between racial/ethnic neighborhood composition and supermarket proximity in Houston, Texas. The strength of our contributions to racial/ethnic stratification theory and the literature on accessing healthy foods is bolstered by the diverse context embodied by Houston. We make two key contributions. First, we assess the explanatory benefits of new measures of racial/ethnic composition, measures that acknowledge an increasingly complex racial/ethnic demography by combining information on 1) the second largest group in addition to the majority; and 2) the historical majority of a block group. Second, we examine the extent to which racial/ethnic associations are explained by SES and two new variables representing the built environment. Information on the location of supermarkets in Houston was obtained for the year 2010 from Info USA Inc. The block group characteristics were derived from the 2007-2011 ACS estimates, and data from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 Censuses. Our results suggest a persistent link between racial/ethnic composition and proximity to supermarkets, which highlights entrenched black disadvantage coupled with malleable relative positions for Hispanic and no majority block groups. However, we also find a strong role of the built environment, namely the density of retail occupations, which may point to new avenues for addressing spatial inequalities in supermarket access.

Authors

• Heather Avery O'Connell, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Lester O. King, Rice University