Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate

"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

"This carefully researched book offers insight into why interventions to eliminate food deserts so often fail. Supermarkets matter—but not for the reasons we think. Kolb shows that the food desert fight is not mostly about food but about fairness and justice—and why everyone should care."

– Sarah Bowen, author of Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won't Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It

"Why do some neighborhoods have pawn shops and payday lenders while others have organic grocery stores and cafes? Kolb tackles this question head-on and explains with clear and convincing prose how racist policies and practices have led to retail inequality in US cities. A must-read for anyone interested in food deserts in particular and urban inequality in general."

– Tanya Golash-Boza, author of Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach

"This book offers a rich qualitative case study addressing the pressing question of why people and groups who have tried to fix food deserts have, for the most part, failed. Chapters are replete with important insights for scholars of contemporary food systems, consumption, neighborhoods, gentrification, and poverty. Kolb offers a distinctly sociological lens on this multifaceted problem, asking why interventions to bring supermarkets and good food projects have not succeeded at changing people's eating habits. He also encourages readers to rethink what and how we know what we know about food deserts and the desires of the people who live in them."

– Michaela DeSoucey, author of Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food

“Kolb drives home an oft-ignored consideration: Low-income neighborhoods deserve the same food options as wealthy neighborhoods, regardless of whether that leads to healthie diets.”

– Civil Eats

“Kolb helps dispel the food desert media frame that implies that food desert residents choose poor diets. Rather, the problem is racism.

– Symbolic Interactionism