About

How does a consolidating grocery industry affect food accessibility for communities across the United States? What are the structural conditions driving the decision to close one grocery store and open another?

This project, Grocery Gap Atlas, visualizes data to help explore and find answers to these questions. We aim to better understand the structural factors that contribute to food insecurity in communities across the U.S., experienced at disproportionately high rates in rural and non-white communities. Specifically, we consider the most basic place to access food - the grocery store - and its relationships to inequitable outcomes.

This project is a collaboration between Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA (RAFI-USA) and the Open Spatial Lab at the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago.

Support for this project was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.

Project Goals

The Grocery Gap Atlas brings together multiple data sources through interactive maps and reports on food access, grocery market concentration, economic disadvantage, and residential segregation. We aim to: 

  1. Communicate and visualize data to better understand the impacts of a consolidating grocery retail market on food access, particularly in communities of color, many of which already experience disproportionate inequities;
  2. Report and compare these measures in communities, counties, and states to uncover trends and intersections in inequities; 
  3. Make clean data accessible for the public to easily download and use for further exploration; and 
  4. Advocate for solutions that build a better food system through equity and accountability.

How to Use

There are many ways to use this tool. You can visualize trends in the data, identify places where trends intersect, and compare measures at different places, ranging from states to counties to individual neighborhoods or Census tracts.

Use the Map to visualize data across the country and region. You can zoom in to an individual Census tract or town, and zoom all the way out to see the full country. Click on the side-bar menu to explore data in a number of different ways: Visualize data by topic, highlight areas on the map, or filter for specific states. Click Map to get started mapping. 

Use Reports to learn more about a place. Search for a state, county, or individual neighborhoods (Census tracts) to see summary statistics for that specific place, how measures have changed over time, and how they compare to other places across the state or country. Click the State Report to get started by searching for your state. 

Use Case Studies to learn about a specific topic, ranging from the top ranking places for corporate consolidation, how trends have changed, and insights into the data. Click on Case Studies to explore.

Team

This project is a collaboration between Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA (RAFI-USA) and the Open Spatial Lab at the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago. It is made possible by the generous support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The project team includes: 

  • Aaron Johnson, Policy Co-Director, RAFI
  • Melanie Canales, Challenging Corporate Power Project Manager, RAFI
  • David Uminsky, Executive Director, University of Chicago DSI
  • Susan Paykin, Program Lead, University of Chicago DSI Open Spatial Lab
  • Dylan Halpern Technical Lead, University Chicago DSI Open Spatial Lab

Citation

Please cite data, visualizations, and findings from this project as:

Halpern, D., Paykin, S., Johnson, A., & Canales, M. (2024). Grocery Gap Atlas (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12725833

License

The Grocery Gap Atlas and all associated outputs are licensed under the open source GNU General Public License.