Mobility Mazes and Food Deserts
In this article by city lab, the issue with how food deserts are traditionally understood. Food deserts are vaguely defined by buffers around people’s residence that are somewhat arbitrary and often overlook how people behave in reality. For instance, someone may reside in a food desert but pass a large grocery store on their daily commute. Others use cars and transit to access grocery stores, making their radius variable. The article posits that in considering these factors in mapping food deserts, policy makers would be able to provide more viable solutions to food deserts. It offers the situation where it may be hard to get grocery stores to open in certain areas if they are deemed “unprofitable” but technology increasing mobility to areas with pre-existing grocery stores (with the example of express buses from deserts) would provide a simpler and quicker fix to lack of healthy food access.
However, there are even more ways to increase mobility to reduce the reach of food deserts beyond express buses. In terms of things that could be done in New York, something as simple as providing City bikes with baskets for bags would increase users abilities to bike to the grocery store. Furthermore, increasing the reliability of public transportation systems would encourage people to perhaps go to further grocery stores. Lastly, using machine learning to predict populations patterns in commuting and transit would help identify which areas are truly deserts, and which transit areas could be a more likely site for a new grocery store.
https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/02/what-food-desert-maps-get-wrong-about-how-people-eat/4741/
