This article takes a new approach to studying food access. It combines environmental justice analysis with systems thinking in an examination of the food environment of Detroit. The article reviews food access literature and identifies how each body of scholarship's underlying assumptions help or distort our understanding of urban food environments. The article argues for more comprehensive approaches to studying food access and demonstrates how such approaches can be implemented. We collected data from multiple sources, including ReferenceUSA, Orbis, and the Michigan Department of Agriculture, between 2011 and 2013 to build a database of food outlets in the city. We used SPSS 22 and ArcGIS 10.1 to analyze and map the data. The article analyzes the location of 3,499 food outlets in Detroit, comprising 34 categories food retailers, growers, supply chain, and food assistance programs. The study identified 96 supermarkets or full-line grocery stores; 1,110 small groceries, convenience stores, mini marts, and liquor stores; 279 specialty food stores; 306 pharmacies, dollar, and variety stores; 1,245 full-service and fast food restaurants and other food service outlets; 157 supply chain operations; 206 farms, community and school gardens, farmers' markets, and produce markets; and 100 food assistance programs. The article finds that though Detroit has areas that lack food outlets, the portrayal of the entire city as a “food desert” is misleading. Moreover, the traditional approach of food desert research of using only or primarily the presence or absence of supermarkets and full-line grocery stores to study food access ignores many important venues from which people obtain food. It also ignores the strategies people use to cope with food insecurity and their responses to limited food access.

There is has been strong interest in the state of diversity in the environmental field for some time now. Recent studies have shown that gender diversity is progressing at a faster pace than racial diversity. This article reports on data collected from 324 mainstream environmental organizations in 2014. It examines gender and racial diversity in six different types of environmental organizations—general conservation organizations, freshwater organizations, environmental education centers, environmental consulting organizations, environmental policy institutes/think tanks, and professional conservation and trade associations. The study found that though females exceed males on the staff of environmental organizations, women are underrepresented in the top leadership echelons of the institutions. The study also found that minorities are underrepresented in all ranks of the staff and leadership of environmental organizations. The successes women have had in being hired into the environmental workforce and being promoted to leadership positions are not being replicated for minorities. In addition, the study examined a seventh type of organization. It examined 13 environmental justice organizations and found high levels of gender and racial diversity in them. The study identified factors such as cultural insensitivity, reluctance to hire minorities, failure to promote minorities to leadership positions, ineffective recruitment strategies, and poor mentoring as conditions retarding racial diversity efforts.

This article argues that there is a long history of environmental racism in American society. The first part of the article briefly discusses some of the environmental practices that discriminated against and negatively impacted people of color. It also discusses the responses of people color to these inequities. The second part of the article examines the rise of the contemporary environmental justice movement. This portion of the essay also looks at the evolution of environmental justice scholarship. It argues that despite controversy over the assertion that race and class are related to the siting patterns of hazardous facilities, most studies support the claim.

There is strong evidence that minority students are interested in environmental careers despite data showing that the percentage of people of color currently employed in environmental organizations is low. This study explores this conundrum by examining five factors that are related to workforce diversity. It assesses the racial and ethnic differences in (a) academic preparation for environmental work, (b) environmental identity, (c) the extent to which students are interested in pursuing careers in the environmental field, (d) the factors that influence students when deciding whether to accept environmental jobs, and (e) students’ salary expectations. This study analyzes data from 157 students—46 Whites, 43 Blacks, and 68 other racial minorities. Data was collected from students participating in science, technology, engineering, and math programs hosted by at a large public university, a mid-sized private university, and a historically Black university. The data, collected from May to June 2016, revealed that minority and White students have similar grades, are taking a similar range of courses, and are members of campus environmental clubs. Students were more likely to describe themselves as an environmentalist rather than as a conservationist. The study also found that minority students are most comfortable working in organizations that promise jobs with upward mobility, leadership opportunities, and incorporate diversity activities in their programming. Though minority students tended to have salary expectations that were higher than that of White students, the differences were insignificant. Moreover, the mean salary that students would accept to work in environmental organizations is compatible with what is currently being paid in the field.

Urban gardens are important sources of sustenance for communities with limited access to food. Hence, this study focuses on food production in gardens in the Toledo metropolitan area in Northwest Ohio. We administered surveys to 150 garden managers from November 2014 to February 2015 in our attempt to better understand how neighbourhood racial composition and poverty levels are related to staffing and voluntarism, food production and distribution, the development of infrastructure, and the adoption of sustainability practices in urban gardens. The results from 30 gardens are presented in this paper. We used Geographic Information Systems to map the gardens and overlay the map with 2010 census data so that we could conduct demographic analyses of the neighbourhoods in which the gardens were located. Though the gardens were small – two acres or less – up to 46 varieties of food were grown in a single garden. Gardens also operated on small budgets. Food from the gardens was gifted or shared with friends, family, and neighbourhood residents. Gardens in predominantly minority neighbourhoods tended to have fewer institutional partners, less garden infrastructure, and had adopted fewer sustainable practices than gardens in predominantly White neighbourhoods. Nonetheless, residents of predominantly minority and high-poverty neighbourhoods participated in garden activities and influenced garden operations. Volunteering and staffing were racialised and gendered.

To date, the research that examines food accessibility has tended to ignore ethnic food outlets. This void leaves us with a limited understanding of how such food stores may, or may not, impact food security. The study discussed herein addressed this by conducting a geospatial assessment of ethnic food outlet accessibility in two U.S. cities: Flint and Grand Rapids, Michigan. We used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools to create a revealed accessibility index for each food outlet, and used the index to determine access within active travel service areas. We utilized an ordinary least squares regression (OLS), and two local models: spatial autoregression (SAR) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) to enhance our understanding of global and localized relationships between outlet accessibility and type (while controlling for known covariates). The results show that the local models outperformed (R² max = 0.938) the OLS model. The study found that there was reduced access to ethnic restaurants in all service areas of Grand Rapids. However, in Flint, we observed this association in the bicycling areas only. Also notable were the influences that demographic characteristics had on access in each city. Ultimately, the findings tell us that nuanced planning and policy approaches are needed in order to promote greater access to ethnic food outlets and reduce overall food insecurity.