this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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I think one thing even more important to keep in mind is how completely irrelevant the US's massive size is. It doesn't fucking matter that there are empty states out west or long distances between cities; the vast majority of people still live within metro areas and that's not any different from Europe.
"ThE uS IS a MasSIvE cOUnTrY" is nothing but a massive American-exceptionalist copout.
Edit: to be clear, I'm not trying to attack @neopenguin in particular here. It's just that lots of people make that ignorant argument, and like the guy who created the video I linked, I'm sick and tired of seeing it. Stop upvoting ignorance!
You're right on this one.
It's so tiring for people to keep repeating this annoying "fac"t that the US is big hence all the poor zoning. It's irrelevant. It's a cop out.
Most food deserts are found in urban areas, where most people live.
The size of the US is very important when discussing food deserts, including within urban limits. Many cities are not friendly to pedestrians and are set up so you have to drive to the commercial centers to get food. When you couple that with poor public transportation, it doesn't make it easy to get fresh food. Mixed use areas are also not as common, since residential and commercial zoning keeps stores out of residential areas.
Like, I have something like 8 grocery stores within 10 miles of me, but there's almost no sidewalks in either direction, and in one direction, you're walking on highway to get there, which isn't safe.
Also, a four hour roundtrip to a grocery store isn't really feasible when you also have work, kids, chores, etc.
Looking at the London metro area, Google tells me that it's about 600 square miles with a population of 9 million. For comparison, Detroit Metro area is almost 1.2K square miles with a population of 3.7 million. Houston is 10K square miles with a population of 7.1 million
So yeah, the size of the US is definitely a factor in food deserts. Outside of maybe NYC metro area (4.6k square miles with 20.1 million people), we just don't have the population density in most of our urban areas.
These Dollar General arguments never leave any doubt as to who lives in a city and who lives in the boonies.
But when we talk about food deserts, that's not where we're talking about. We're not talking about the vast majority. We're talking about the other 20%, or 66 million Americans, who live in rural areas and who get a Dollar General instead of an Wegman's.
"Despite the increase in the urban population, urban areas, defined as densely developed residential, commercial, and other nonresidential areas, now account for 80.0% of the U.S. population" - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-rural-populations.html
On the contrary, we're very much talking about urban areas, because food deserts very much include urban areas.
I myself lived in a food desert until recently, despite the fact that my neighborhood is so urban I could easily ride my bike to the state capitol building. I had a choice of several supermarkets each about 2 miles away, but none within a mile until a new one opened a year or so ago.