Corner stores were an essential feature when walking proximity to your customer base was necessary, but between the economics of plopping a greyfield Walmart on

Corner stores were an essential feature when walking proximity to your customer base was necessary, but between the economics of plopping a greyfield Walmart on a busy avenue (as in the States), or a greenfield Carrefour or Auchan on the ring road between the city and the exurbs (as in Europe), they struggle enough on their own, without zoning or the town's own planning commission being at fault. As the article says, the decline of neighborhood shops carrying fresh produce is one of the processes by which food deserts perpetuate. But the pivot to chips and soda-selling gas stations -- where the fuel, also being a community service, is just a hook sold as a loss leader to drive traffic to high-margin drinks and snacks -- is an economic one, where the state of the emergent market rewards an establishment selling 87, cigarettes and nonperishable Coke and Lays more than one selling lettuce, tomatoes, and peaches. Towns can distort this field to try and improve local outcomes (and they probably should), but larger forces are also at play. It could also be that some of the solutions come with new tradeoffs. Getting sustainable markets of perishable items with US innerbelt settlement patterns to compete favorably with supermarkets is probably harder, and a longer-term venture than, say, setting up a delivery service that ships subsidized, fresh foods to families in need -- but this solution doesn't do as much for community cohesion, doesn't change settlement patterns, doesn't fix market failures, and pollutes more in transport. Nonetheless, it can improve real quality of life for many people. Negotiating such tradeoffs is where interest groups begin to diverge.