Designing digital food sovereignty with gis mapping in response to urban food insecurity

Abstract

Food insecurity is an international phenomena characterized by the lack of consistent access to affordable healthy food. Globally, the urban poor are especially susceptible to food insecurity, and in the United States, structural inequality plays a large role in shaping access to affordable healthy food in poor urban neighborhoods. In a densely populated area like New York City, residents tend to rely on take-out and corner stores to meet their daily nutrition needs. This is especially true in neighborhoods that experience higher levels of poverty in combination with a majority Black and Latinx demographic, which tend to have limited access to supermarkets and nutrient dense food options. Despite efforts from the New York City government to increase the availability of affordable fresh produce through targeted retail support, food insecurity remains a prevalent issue in neighborhoods like East New York, in Brooklyn. Simply adding new stores to an area does little to shift the behaviors and attitudes of consumers within that food environment; food insecure neighborhoods need community based initiatives focused on shifting the perception of and relationship with their foodscape. In response to urban food insecurity, this research introduces the concept of ‘Digital Food Sovereignty’, in which digital infrastructures are leveraged to enhance a community’s ability to manage the production, distribution, and consumption of food within their foodscape. In this study, Digital Food Sovereignty is explored within the context of the neighborhood East New York, using GIS mapping, web scraping, and crowd-sourced data to design the framework for an app that would assist communities in visualizing and interacting with their foodscapes. By mapping nutrition and low prices to local food data, in addition to suggesting healthy recipes based on that data, the ‘My Foodscape’ app not only has the potential to connect food insecure people to existing nutrition resources, but to also revolutionize the ways in which communities understand and interact with their food environment.