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kleinbl00  ·  4113 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Buying apples, chicken breast, reduced fat milk, and wheat bread in Detroit

So with no scale, I got curious so I mapped the only two "green dots" in Dearborn Heights. From Save-A-Lot to Seaway Marketplace is a 1.6 mile walk, 28 minutes according to Google. By way of comparison I'm 1.1 miles from anything that would provide me those four ingredients and I'm in a hoighty-toighty 'berg near LAX. Granted, once I get there I'm across the street from a truly ridonkulous grocery store but by their way of counting, I'm in a "food desert."

I think there's a very real problem with the lack of quality food in much of the inner city, but I also think this article doesn't tell the full story. A lot of the "markets" shown on the map are party stores and the like - CVS? Petro Mart? - and when they visited a produce market it counts as "nothing" because it was closed when they visited.

If you can't accurately describe the problem you can't accurately map the solution.