Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate

“The most common health and business media frames repeatedly misdiagnose residents’ core complaint: the food desert fight is not only about food; it is about fairness and justice.

Yet the repeated framing of health as a goal of these solutions sidesteps residents’ deeper desire: undoing retail inequality decades in the making.”

— Ken Kolb, PhD, Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate

Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate

book cover for Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate

The food desert debate has long operated on two faulty assumptions:

  1. There is plenty of demand; it is the lack of supply that sends residents elsewhere.

  2. Proximity (to the store, to the product) induces nutritional behavior: people eat what is in front of them.

For years, we’ve oversimplified the issue and neglected to dig deep into the real reasons why residents in food deserts want not only grocery stores but also “good retail.”

Retail Inequality combines thorough research with years of community engagement in the Southernside and West Greenville neighborhoods of Greenville, South Carolina.

Whether you’re a policymaker, city planner, researcher, or layperson, Retail Inequality is an engaging and approachable look at the topic of food deserts, food insecurity, and what we need to do to create a more equitable future for all.

  • "In this excellent book, Kenneth H. Kolb argues that retail inequality is not some random economic aberration—rather, it is directly tied to policy and planning and it is also the private and public sector outcome of our inability to deal with our number one problem: race in America.”

    – Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University

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Download the worksheet

Apply what you’ve learned in Retail Inequality to brainstorm food accessibility in your own community. This editable PDF worksheet can be printed or filled out digitally.

Photo Gallery

Meet some of the places and people featured in Retail Inequality

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