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For the end of my GSP 101 course, students were tasked with extracting and analyzing census and relative spatial data for Southern California to determine areas that would be designated food deserts. Food Deserts are areas suffering from limited access to affordable and nutritious food, primarily in impoverished areas where many individuals also lack access to transportation. Consequently, the lack of nutrition costs society through the need for increased medical care, infrastructure, etc. This is a complex socio-economic issue with many different ways of defining food deserts and determining causes, this project is only an introduction to this issue and others like it. By locating these areas using GIS and presenting the findings to policymakers and the public, the hope is for policy implementation that will help alleviate the stress felt by these communities. The project was primarily just an extraction of the data, but with a degree in Economics comes the ability to interpret this data and suggest policy change.
Below is the unedited version of the project I submitted for class along with a brief interpretation and future suggestions.
Food Deserts Report.pdfProccess
This project analyzed at-risk communities, defined as those having 25% or greater of the population below the poverty line, as these were the most likely to not own a vehicle. Groceries stores were selected based on their total income, so that only large stores, likely with a greater selecitno of nutritious food, were selected. The grocery stores were then each given a mile radius that would be used to select any communities outside of these zones. The remaining areas of at-risk communities outside this one mile buffer were deemed food deserts. All of the analysis and the two maps produced were done using ARC GIS software. The maps can be found in the report.
Potential Applications
This type of analysis could be done in a number of different ways depending on how accurate or specific we want our results. We could take this same data and go one step further by separating food deserts based on their racial makeup, to discover if their are racial disparities and to what degree. We could expand the buffer for the grocery stores, or up the poverty threshold to isolate those in most need. We could include additional data such as public transportation routes to see who truly does not have access or how easily it could be to increase access by expanding or rerouting. A similar analyses could be done for a variety of other institutions such as health clinics, gas stations, public transport, employment opportunities, etc., or even a combination thereof. The limits of such an analysis are only bound by the data available to us.
Once the variables are defined and the analysis concluded, this information can then be communicated to policymakers, firms, or even the general public to bring about real change. Perhaps we suggest ways to incentivize firms to develop in these areas, or policymakers to expand public transportation, or the public to come together and create community gardens. We can talk about the pressure such an issue puts on the healthcare system, the toll it takes on community welfare, or the benefits something as simple as a reliable grocery store can have.
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