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Food Deserts, Oases, or Mirages?

Small Markets and Community Food Security in the San Francisco Bay Area

University of California, Berkeley

Julie Guthman

University of California, Santa Cruz

Samuel Raskin

In light of claims that many low-income urban neighborhoods are "food deserts," this article reports on pilot research to assess whether and how small, full-service food retailers contribute to urban food security. It demonstrates that such stores meet many of the criteria for community food security by providing a wide variety of relatively low-cost foods. At the same time, their geographic unevenness, tendency to target particular ethnic clienteles, and inability to address affordability in an absolute sense place some caveats on the conclusions and suggest the need for more fine-grained research regarding how the unique economic development histories and cultural politics of neighborhoods affect food availability.

Key Words: community food security • food access; local economic development • grocery retail

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