Assessing the existence of food deserts, food swamps, and supermarket redlining in Saginaw

A small, racially segregated mid-Michigan city

Abstract

Food insecurity is an issue that is commonplace in American cities but that impacts Blacks dispropor­tionately. Unfortunately, most food access studies focus on large cities, leaving us with little knowl­edge of food access in small cities. This paper focuses on Saginaw, a small, racially segregated Michigan city. We examined the following ques­tions: (1) How has the distribution of Saginaw’s food outlets changed between 2013 and 2023? (2) Does Saginaw fit the definition of a food desert in 2013 or 2023? (3) Does Saginaw fit the defini­tion of a food swamp in 2013 or 2023? (4) Has super­market redlining occurred in Saginaw in 2013 or 2023? (5) How is population decline related to food outlet distribution? (6) How do food store closures impact food store distribution?

Food store data were collected and verified in 2013 and 2023 from Data Axle and other sources. We used ArcGIS 10.8.1 for spatial mapping and SPSS 28 for statistical analyses. We conducted regression analyses to determine how the distribu­tion of food outlets changed over a decade, com­paring the 577 food outlets identified in 2013 with the 452 found in 2023, a decline of 21.7%. There were 85 fewer food outlets in Saginaw in 2023 than in 2013. The study found evidence of a vanishing food infrastructure. Eighty-nine food outlets were shuttered in 2023; 43 were in Saginaw.

Restaurants dominated the food landscape in both study periods. Though many food access studies focus on supermarkets and large grocery stores, these venues composed only 4.9% of the food outlets in 2013 and 3.8% in 2023. Though portions of Saginaw had limited access to super­markets and large grocery stores, describing the whole city as a food desert is inaccurate, nor did the findings support the food swamp or supermarket redlining theses.