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Check out "Poor Economics" by Banerjee and Duflo. It's a pretty useful term. I'm in the US, which can be pretty sparse even in urban areas if they were designe
by washadjeffmad 2y ago
Check out "Poor Economics" by Banerjee and Duflo. It's a pretty useful term.
I'm in the US, which can be pretty sparse even in urban areas if they were designed with particular bulk transit in mind. We have an industrial site that several hundred people need to report to over a 12 hour period, some temporarily, some for the entire duration. There's no parking and it's surrounded by multilane roads, now, so without bussing, no one can enter or leave except on a particular schedule, which hasn't been aligning to their personal schedules, so they can't necessarily get back to their cars to get access to food that may exist half a mile away in an otherwise urban area. There are no food trucks, and there's no food delivery.
If you're there, there's no convenient way to eat anything you didn't bring. The city took a look and now classifies it as a food desert, so they have to fix it.
Other types of food deserts are named as an indicator of poverty. In my home town, there was one grocery store and only a few diners. Once the commuter rail ended, about a third of the population (largely plant and mill workers) could only access that that part of town if they had a vehicle that could take the highway. A formerly 10 minute trip by rail and foot suddenly took three or four times as long and required a car! With how many single car households there were, people lost access to convenient food and eventually formed their own town.
Something similar happened when the bus routes were changed in another city I lived in, intentionally. It was part of a "beautification" scheme to create a false impression of wealth and demographics in a bid to attract investors, and they thought manufacturing a food desert would keep people out. The first year, some elderly people on fixed income died trying to make the trip by foot in the heat or were hit by cars, and the city was sued to reinstate transport.