How urban planning and housing policy helped create ‘food apartheid’ in US cities | Opinion
Updated Mar 09, 2021;
Posted Mar 09, 2021
Black neighborhoods have a higher density of fast-food outlets than in white districts. (David McNew/Getty Images)
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Even in the the richest parts of urban America there are pockets of deep food insecurity, and more often than not it is Black and Latino communities that are hit hardest.
As an urban planning academic who teaches a course on food justice, I’m aware that this disparity is in large part through design. For over a century, urban planning has been used as a toolkit for maintaining white supremacy that has divided U.S. cities along racial lines. And this has contributed to the development of so-called “food deserts” – areas of limited access to reasonably priced, healthy, culturally relevant foods – and “food swamps” – places with a preponderance of stores selling “fast” and “junk” food.