Sociodemographic Disparities, Redlining, and the Distribution of Open and Closed Food Outlets in Michigan’s Greater Grand Rapids Area

The United Nations, in developing the Sustainable Development Goals, pays particular attention to cities, as they are crucial to achieving established benchmarks. Globally, many cities have high levels of food insecurity, and food access is a major component of the problem. Cities have increasingly complex and interdependent food environments. Yet, urban food systems are not well understood with respect to the impacts of redlining, residential segregation, and food store closures on food outlet distribution. Limited work is also being done on the relationship between urban sustainability efforts and food access. Here, we analyze 2229 open and closed food outlets in the Greater Grand Rapids area of southwest Michigan to examine their distribution and whether disparities are evident. We examined the impact of historic redlining on the distribution of food outlets. We also described sustainability efforts in the study area and the way county and city plans connect food access with sustainability. Roughly half of the food outlets are restaurants, 13.3% are small grocery and convenience stores, and 6.3% are pharmacies, dollar stores, and variety stores. Supermarkets and large grocery stores, which are the subject of most food access studies, account for 5% of food outlets. The most reliable predictors of food outlet distribution in the fully adjusted regression models are HOLC classification grade, median household income, educational attainment, and population density. The racial composition of the census tract was significant in only one model. The study leads us to urge more researchers to compare cities and adjacent municipalities, as income dynamics, neighborhood characteristics, population density, and educational attainment vary across urban, suburban, and rural areas.