Multiply-deserted areas: environmental racism and food, pharmacy, and greenspace access in the Urban South

ABSTRACT

Unequal access to important resources like grocery stores, pharmacies, and parks in the urban built environment has been a significant social problem under study by social scientists. Drawing from work in urban and environmental justice studies that conceptualize racism as a structural factor that shapes environmental inequality, I assess spatial inequality in urban cities across the southern USA. Utilizing data from the U.S. Census, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Provider Identifier (NPI) registry, and county and state government websites, I examine the relevance of race and class to the existence of neighborhoods as single or multiple resource deserts, coined multiply-deserted areas (MDAs). Results indicate that predominantly Black neighborhoods are more than twice as likely to be resource deserts, even after adjusting for class. Additionally, predominantly Black neighborhoods are nearly three times as likely to have more intense, compounded resource scarcity than other neighborhoods. Moreover, results indicate a race and class interaction effect such that a predominantly Black neighborhood has increased odds of being a multiply-deserted area as median household income increases. The findings implicate yet another route through which racism shapes inequality and demonstrate a need to address racial differences in access to resources across socioeconomic status.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban
• desert
• spatial inequality
• black neighborhoods
• environmental justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This association is consistent when food deserts are measured in terms of access to healthy food and supermarkets, but when measuring food deserts based on access to fast food restaurants and unconventional ‘healthy’ food destinations such as convenience stores and dollar stores, the findings are mixed (Zenk and Powell 2008).

2. These factors are commonly used in designating urban/rural status by the U.S. Census. Nearly all (96%) of the census tracts in the sample are federally designated ‘urban’ census tracts.

3. Supplemental analysis using the ½ mile buffer supports this assertion; nearly all (96%) of neighborhoods were a desert of some kind using this measure and approximately 75% of neighborhoods were multiply-deserted areas.

4. Defined as food stores with at least $2 million in annual sales and containing all the major food departments (Economic Research Service (ERS) Economic Research Service (ERS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2015)

5. Neighborhood spatial inequality has been measured many ways, including place-based measures using straight-line/Euclidean distance or street-network distance (Sparks, Bania, and Leete 2011; Leete, Bania, and Sparks-Ibanga 2012), travel time-based measures, and transportation-option measures (McKenzie 2014). In line with the food desert measure, which uses straight-line/Euclidean distance, I follow suit using Euclidean distance for the green and pharmacy desert measures. Moreover, in a study comparing Euclidean and street network-based measures of access, Sparks, Bania, and Leete (2011) show that Euclidean distances generate the same relative pattern of food access as do network distances.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)/Ford Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Lacee A. Satcher

Lacee A. Satcher, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Boston College. She received her PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University in 2021. Her primary research interests include race/ethnicity, health & place, and environmental justice. Other interests include place & inequality, social psychology of health, and urban sociology. Her most recent work focuses on the race-environment-health connection, specifically how various individual social identities/social locations structure our relations with and within space and place to shape health outcomes, health experiences, and place attachment.