An issue of distance part 1

When I first started my work on Food Deserts, I realized that I had to figure out exactly what that term meant spacially. I worked off of Mari Gallagher's model of distance found in her study on Chicago. She took the location of a grocery store and used a one mile radius as  a zone. That zone was supposed to be a good area and not considered a Food Desert because of the close location of the store. Area outside of that circle that did not receive any overlay from any other grocery store was considered to be a possible Food Desert. What also helps to define a desert is the number of fast food restaurants in the area. If a unhealthy fast food place is closer than a grocery store (and most likely cheaper) it causes more people to make unhealthy choices due to proximity.


Here is a quick map of the Edmondson Avenue Food Desert, which has been the community I have been working with and focusing on: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=218359790340298941836.0004a33db895d3c8c6f43&z=16

The blue point represents the MARC station where the community developed and held a Farmer's Market last year in 2010. They are aware of their lack of access to food and were trying to do something about it. You can visit the community organization's website here - http://westbaltimoremarc.blogspot.com/p/west-baltimore-farmers-market.html. The red circle has a radius of one mile from the source of fresh produce, the Giant. Black dots represent liquor stores, red dots represent fast food, purple stores represent corner markets that have a limited section of fresh produce at a steep price, and the green dot is the nearest grocery store (Giant). This is only a small part of the community of Edmondson, and this map shows that there are plenty of blocks without access. Just think, normally a community has access to 4-5 grocery stores. Where I live in Towson, I have access to 4 within a mile radius.

This is your brain. This is your brain on Food Deserts.