Smart Growth Around America

I recently lived in an area where the nearest grocery store was a bus ride away. Once, pressed for time, I ran to the two little shops within walking distance to buy bread for toast; neither of them had a single loaf. They had cleaning supplies, frozen foods, and canned non-perishables, but no fresh bread.

Inner cities and rural areas can be full of areas known as “food deserts” — areas where fresh food is hard to come by. Large supermarkets choose not to locate in these areas because of higher security costs, creating a food equivalent of old housing redlining practices, leaving whole neighborhoods or communities without decent access to fresh food. Residents either have to make do with unhealthy convenience stores or fast food, or spend precious time and money traveling to other towns or sections of the city for each trip for food.

This week, White House Urban Affairs Director Adolfo Carrion began his tour of American communities who innovate solutions to challenges that they and other communities face, with the hope that learning about these local solutions can help other towns in similar situations.  His first stop?  A supermarket.

But not just any supermarket. This Safeway is located in inner-city Philadelphia, in a section of town where numerous chain supermarkets had refused to locate — a classic food desert. But due to Pennsylvania’s Fresh Food Financing Initiative, an innovative grant program, the community was able to fund the new supermarket, which hires from the neighborhood and even partners with a local high school to sell vegetables the students grow.

Adolfo writes:

The first display we encountered was a beautiful spread of bright green peppers, squash and tomatoes grown by students from the local Martin Luther King High School. ShopRite partnered with the high school to sell produce grown by the students. The supermarket not only offers fresh produce, delectable store-baked sweet potato pie, and virtually every product that a family shopper could want, but it also boasts a well-trained professional workforce that lives in the surrounding neighborhood.

Now that is delicious news.

Tags: Food and Farms, President Obama.
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