Neighborhood Diversity and Food Access in a Changing Urban Spatial Structure

Abstract

This paper examines food access disparity in relation to neighborhood diversity, especially race/ethnicity and poverty in a changing intrametropolitan spatial structure, using the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as a case study. With detailed grocery store data, this study finds a substantive change in food access between 2003 and 2015 in terms of both the number of grocery stores and the gravity–based accessibility indicator, although such access varies by neighborhood characteristics and spatial location in terms of central city, inner–ring suburbs, and outer–ring suburbs. While access to grocery stores for minority–concentrated neighborhoods in outer–ring suburbs is comparable to other neighborhoods, neighborhoods with a high share of African American residents in inner–ring suburbs and those with a high share of Latino residents in the central city have significantly lower access to food outlets. Neighborhoods with higher poverty rate tend to have more food outlets across the region except for in inner–ring suburbs.