Comparative Approaches to Measuring Food Access in Urban Areas

Sparks, Andrea; Bania, Neil; Leete, Laura

doi:10.1177/0042098010375994

Cited by 64 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Most of the few notable exceptions have been conducted at micro levels, and tend to be related to urban facilities such as accessibility to healthcare deliveries (Langford and Higgs, 2006), dialysis service centres (Yang, 2006), urban parks (Omer, 2006) or food access (Sparks et al, 2011). These studies mainly concentrate on accessibility to certain amenities or facilities where a particular service is provided (such as a healthcare facility), or where some utility is obtained (e.g.…”

Section: Zoning Issues In Transport-related Spatial Analysis Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Territorial cohesion impacts of high-speed rail under different zoning systems

Ortega

López

Monzón

2014

Journal of Transport Geography

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ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords:High-speed rail (HSR) MAUP Zoning systems Accessibility indicators Territorial cohesion effects Large-scale transport infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail (HSR) produce significant effects on the spatial distribution of accessibility. These effects, commonly known as territorial cohesion effects, are receiving increasing attention in the research literature. However, there is little empirical research into the sensitivity of these cohesion results to methodological issues such as the definition of the limits of the study area or the zoning system. In a previous paper (Ortega et al., 2012), we investigated the influence of scale issues, comparing the cohesion results obtained at four different planning levels. This paper makes an additional contribution to our research with the investigation of the influence of zoning issues. We analyze the extent to which changes in the size of the units of analysis influence the measurement of spatial inequalities. The methodology is tested by application to the Galician (north-western) HSR corridor, with a length of nearly 670 km, included in the Spanish PEIT (Strategic Transport and Infrastructure Plan) 2005-2020. We calculated the accessibility indicators for the Galician HSR corridor and assessed their corresponding territorial distribution. We used five alternative zoning systems depending on the method of data representation used (vector or raster), and the level of detail (cartographic accuracy or cell size). Our results suggest that the choice between a vector-based and raster-based system has important implications. The vector system produces a higher mean accessibility value and a more polarized accessibility distribution than raster systems. The increased pixel size of raster-based systems tends to give rise to higher mean accessibility values and a more balanced accessibility distribution. Our findings strongly encourage spatial analysts to acknowledge that the results of their analyses may vary widely according to the definition of the units of analysis.

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Section: Zoning Issues In Transport-related Spatial Analysis Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Territorial cohesion impacts of high-speed rail under different zoning systems

Ortega

López

Monzón

2014

Journal of Transport Geography

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“…Such -food deserts‖ are particularly likely to be found in low-income areas, where the single mothers in this study are disproportionately located. See Sparks et al (2011) for a detailed review of research on the spatial distribution of food deserts across high-and low-income areas. 34 These controls are: log of median household income, log of population density, percent non-Hispanic white, percent foreign born, percent ages 65 and over, percent female, percent of children ages 0-2 and 3-5 living in female-headed households (all at the census tract-level), percent of children in the school eligible for free/reduced price lunch, an indicator for whether a majority of children in the school are minorities, and an indicator for whether the school receives Title I funding (all at the school-level).…”

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confidence: 99%

The geographic accessibility of child care subsidies and evidence on the impact of subsidy receipt on childhood obesity

Herbst

Tekin

2012

Journal of Urban Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S ABSTRACTThe Geographic Accessibility of Child Care Subsidies and Evidence on the Impact of Subsidy Receipt on Childhood Obesity * This paper examines the impact of the spatial accessibility of public human services agencies on the likelihood of receiving a child care subsidy among disadvantaged mothers with young children. In particular, we collect data on the location of virtually every human services agency in the U.S. and use this information to calculate the approximate distance that families must travel from home in order to reach the nearest office that administers the subsidy application process. Using data from the Kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), our results indicate that an increase in the distance to a public human services agency reduces the likelihood that a family receives a child care subsidy. Specifically, we estimate an elasticity of subsidy receipt with respect to distance of -0.13. The final section of the paper provides an empirical application in which we use variation in families' travel distance to identify the causal effect of child care subsidies on children's weight outcomes. Our instrumental variables estimates suggest that subsidized child care leads to sizeable increases in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among low-income children. JEL Classification:I12, I18, J13, R53

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“…In each case, however, the various components of access were addressed separately and tradeoffs among them could not be explored. Sparks, Bania, and Leete (2011) demonstrated that the circular buffer and network service methods provide similar results. Based on a lack of differences resulting from the two methods, they concluded that researchers should use whatever method is easily accessible to them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Most researchers have agreed that food access issues and food deserts are associated with physical places (Leete, Bania, & Sparks-Ibanga, 2012;Sparks, Bania, & Leete, 2011), despite the challenges of identifying or placing boundaries on those places. Geographical information systems (GIS) are a useful tool to measure and better understand food access and the food environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping the Cost of a Balanced Diet, as a Function of Travel Time and Food Price

Hilbert

Evans-Cowley

Reece

et al. 2014

JAFSCD

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We present a new method for analyzing spatial variation in the cost of a balanced diet, as an alternative to food desert classification. Our specific hypothesis is that the cost of a balanced diet varies according to where one lives, as a function of travel and food item costs. We collected price data for the USDA Thrifty Food Plan from approximately 30 percent of food retail outlets of various kinds in the three Gulf Coast counties of Mississippi, and these prices were extrapolated to the remaining stores. Transportation costs were calculated for both driving by automobile and the combination of walking and public transportation by bus, accounting for both the shoppers' time and the cost of automobile mileage. We developed a "traveling purchaser problem" algorithm to estimate the lowest-cost combination of travel and food costs for purchasing all items in the Thrifty Food Plan for each residential parcel in the study area, and mapped the resulting costs and examined their variation. Estimated costs varied more because of transportation costs than food prices, and ranged from US$109 to US$215 for automobile travel and from Results of this analysis demonstrate that the cost of acquiring a balanced diet varies considerably and more or less continuously. Food is not equally cheap for all; it depends on where one lives. For any given location, an estimate of the cost of a balanced diet, including both food price and transportation, is more useful than a classification as food desert or not in understanding access issues and needs. Furthermore, policy alternatives that are intended to influence access should be evaluated based on how much they influence costs, and for whom, depending on where people live.

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Comparative Approaches to Measuring Food Access in Urban Areas

Cited by 64 publications

References 29 publications

Territorial cohesion impacts of high-speed rail under different zoning systems

Territorial cohesion impacts of high-speed rail under different zoning systems

The geographic accessibility of child care subsidies and evidence on the impact of subsidy receipt on childhood obesity

Mapping the Cost of a Balanced Diet, as a Function of Travel Time and Food Price

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