Philly's Food Deserts: How Walkable Neighborhoods, Mixed Use Development, and Smaller Grocery Stores Improve Access for All

Give me mini-TJs or give me death!

TL;DR: Philadelphia's food desert problem isn't just about a lack of grocery stores—it's fundamentally a land-use issue. By embracing walkable neighborhoods, encouraging mixed-use development, and enabling smaller-format grocery options, we can break the car-dependent food access model that leaves so many Philadelphians behind. The solution isn't more parking lots around big box stores—it's reimagining our neighborhoods as places where food access doesn’t have to mean “fill up my car.”

The Spatial Reality of Food Deserts

When we talk about food deserts in Philadelphia, we often frame it purely as a grocery store distribution problem—some neighborhoods have grocery stores, others don’t, and that’s bad. But like so many urban challenges, this is fundamentally a transportation and land use issue in disguise.

Too many Philadelphians live in neighborhoods considered food deserts—areas where residents must travel more than half a mile to reach a grocery store with fresh produce. And this half-mile threshold assumes a critical detail: that walking is possible, safe, and comfortable. When you're navigating stroad-like conditions on Roosevelt Boulevard, crossing eight lanes of traffic with inadequate pedestrian infrastructure, that half-mile might as well be five miles anyway.

The math of food access mirrors just about every land-use and transportation question I’ve tackled here: designing for cars is what makes food deserts, full stop. When you need a typical suburban-style supermarket, which sits on an imperious 4-5 acres of land—most of it dedicated to parking—to serve about 10,000 customers, you force everyone to either drive or suffer the walk through the parking lot.

Let me pull the important bit out front: because grocery stores are mandated to include parking, they have to scale their operations to serve enough people to justify that parking. Yes, you read that right: grocery stores have to serve huge numbers of people at a single location because they’re forced to use the bulk of their land for parking. Not the other way around.

This is not “meeting the need of the market”, this is the supplier being forced to cater to a subset of the market, which then shifts public perception of what the market needs.

At risk of sounding redundant here, grocery stores don’t provide parking and massive stores because it’s the best way to meet their customers’ needs—they are forced to provide parking (via parking mandates), which represents such a huge cost burden, that the store itself needs to be massive to reasonably turn a profit.

“Aight,” you might say, “but I don’t mind a big ol’ grocery store. Love me some Costco. Aldi is bae.”

I, too, love lower prices for bulk products—but the only reason that tradeoff exists is because of the price of parking to the business.

Wow. I didn’t think I’d end up so deep in the problem statement in just this one section. But yes, onward to the alternative, and how we can get there.

The Car Dependency Trap

Our current food access model suffers from the same car-dependency trap that plagues our transportation system. We've designed a city where large-format stores with massive parking lots are the primary way people access food, creating a system that:

• Requires car ownership to participate fully

• Places disproportionate burdens on low-income residents

• Creates food deserts in precisely the neighborhoods with lowest car ownership

• Takes up valuable urban land with parking rather than housing or community spaces

• Forces residents to make fewer, larger shopping trips instead of smaller, more frequent ones

Just as with transportation, this isn't a technical problem—it's a system design problem. We've structured our food retail around the assumption of universal car access, when approximately 30% of Philadelphia households don't own cars.

Okay! So now, what would the alternative be? Given that the US is a 3000-mile series of supermarkets interspersed with few and far between over-priced corner stores with subpar offerings, it makes sense that the broad consensus is that supermarkets must just be the only scale where the business makes sense and can hit the right price and quality.

Again—that’s backwards. The scale is only the solution when parking is mandated.

With less infrastructural and operational overhead, grocery stores can and do thrive on foot traffic. It’s true that examples are hard to find in these United States, but cities like Vienna, Austria, have 3-4 small-format grocery stores per block.

When you walk past 32 grocery stores on your way home from work, and when your home has 4 grocery stores within a 2 minute walk, all of a sudden it’s so much more reasonable to pop in and buy just what you need for dinner that night or for a few days, rather than having to buy enough to sustain yourself for 2 weeks.

Your food is fresher, more people have access to food, and nobody needs to walk the urban parking lot hellscape. Win-win-win.

The Both/And Solution

Okiedoke—now, what do we need to make this pristine vision a reality?

The solution to food deserts requires the same "both/and" approach I've advocated for in transportation policy. We need to:

1. Make neighborhoods more walkable to existing food sources

2. Enable smaller-format grocery stores through zoning and incentives

3. Integrate food retail into mixed-use development

4. Create safe transportation alternatives to reach larger stores

This isn't just theoretical. Cities worldwide have demonstrated that food access improves dramatically when neighborhoods are designed for multimodal mobility and mixed use.

Walkability as Food Policy

When we improve walkability, we're effectively implementing food policy. Every protected bike lane, widened sidewalk, and traffic-calmed street expands the practical radius of food access for neighborhood residents.

Consider Fairhill, where many residents live within technical walking distance of grocery options but face dangerous street crossings and frankly just unpleasant walking conditions. By implementing basic safety improvements like daylit intersections, protected crosswalks, and slowed vehicle speeds, we could instantly expand functional food access for thousands of residents—without building a single new store.

Walkability improvements have another critical benefit: they make neighborhood-scale grocery retail viable. When more customers can comfortably walk to a store, the store doesn't need massive parking infrastructure to succeed. This virtuous cycle enables exactly the kind of smaller, neighborhood-integrated food retail that our food deserts need most. (And for all you small-business buffs out there, the money can stay in the neighborhood when it isn’t owned by Jeff Bezos)

The Neighborhood Grocery Renaissance

Philadelphia actually has a rich history of neighborhood-scale food retail. Before the rise of supermarkets and car culture, corner stores, public markets, and small grocers formed the backbone of the city's food system. The Italian Market still demonstrates the vibrancy and efficiency of this model. (..but don’t get me started on the fact that 9th street caters to through traffic)

A modern version of this approach is already emerging. In cities with strong walkability and transit, we're seeing the return of smaller-format grocery stores:

• 10,000-15,000 square foot urban grocers instead of 50,000+ square foot supermarkets

• Corner stores upgraded with fresh produce sections

• Public markets hosting multiple food vendors in a single location

• Mixed-use developments with ground-floor grocery retail

These formats serve more people with less land while integrating seamlessly into neighborhood fabric. They don't require zoning variances, they aren’t mandated to have parking lots or garages, and they’re all safer as a result. They create active street frontages that improve neighborhood safety and vibrancy. And crucially, they remain accessible to residents without cars.

The Mixed-Use Multiplier

When we allow mixed-use development—particularly in areas currently zoned solely for commercial or residential use—we create the density needed to support neighborhood-scale food retail.

A four-story mixed-use building with ground-floor retail and housing above creates a built-in customer base for that retail. This isn't abstract theory—it's basic business math. A grocery store needs a certain number of customers within its radius to be viable. When we allow more housing near retail, we make that retail more sustainable.

This is particularly relevant in neighborhoods like Strawberry Mansion and Sharswood, where zoning often restricts mixed-use development precisely where it would be most beneficial for food access.

Cough, cough, Jeffrey Young, cough, cough, Bonita Cummings, cough.

The Loading Zone Lesson from Angelo's

Remember the Angelo's pizza situation I wrote about recently? The core issue wasn't the business itself but the car infrastructure around it. The same principle applies to food access.

Many corner stores struggle with deliveries because there's nowhere for trucks to legally stop. Larger grocers demand massive parking lots that devour urban land. Both problems stem from our failure to properly allocate street space.

By implementing loading zones for deliveries and prioritizing human-scale transportation over parking, we make it possible for food retail to thrive without requiring acres of parking. This is the same spatial efficiency argument that applies to transportation more broadly—we can move more people (and food) through our city by prioritizing space-efficient modes.

The Land Value Tax Connection

Our current property tax system actively discourages the kind of development that would improve food access. Large-format stores with huge parking lots pay relatively little in taxes compared to the land they consume, while mixed-use buildings with grocery retail on the ground floor face higher tax burdens for making better use of urban land.

By shifting to a Land Value Tax model, we would reverse this incentive structure. Suddenly, that massive Fresh Grocer parking lot across from CHOP’s proposed parking garage would face higher carrying costs, encouraging more efficient land use. Meanwhile, developing mixed-use buildings with neighborhood-scale grocery options would become more financially attractive.

This isn't just about penalizing inefficient land use—it's about aligning our tax system with our community goals, including equitable food access.

The Transit Connection

Even with improved walkability and more neighborhood-scale options, some residents will still need to reach larger grocery stores. This is where quality transit comes in.

When SEPTA routes are reliable, frequent, and convenient, grocery shopping without a car becomes practical. Cities like Toronto and Chicago have demonstrated this with grocery stores built directly into transit stations or located at key transit nodes.

Yet Philadelphia's transit system often fails precisely the residents who need it most for food access. Bus routes in food desert neighborhoods face some of the system's worst on-time performance and frequency issues. By prioritizing transit in these areas—through dedicated bus lanes, transit signal priority, and increased frequency—we turn transit into a food access solution.

The Real-World Impact

Let's translate these abstract principles into concrete reality for a typical resident of Nicetown, a neighborhood with limited food options:

Under our current system, Sarah, a mother of two without a car, must:

• Walk 20 minutes to the nearest bus stop

• Wait up to 30 minutes for the bus

• Ride 25 minutes to the nearest full-service grocery store

• Shop quickly because she needs to pick up her children from school

• Carry all groceries back on the same route

• Limit purchases to what she can physically carry

• Repeat this process 2-3 times per week

With the changes I'm proposing, Sarah's experience transforms:

• Walk 10 minutes to a neighborhood-scale grocer on an improved sidewalk

• Shop at a store with fresh produce and staples

• Carry a manageable amount of groceries home

• For larger shopping trips, take a frequent, reliable bus directly to a grocery store

• Eventually, perhaps access a ground-floor grocery in a mixed-use development within her neighborhood

This isn't just more convenient—it fundamentally changes her family's access to nutrition and improves their quality of life.

A Food System for Everyone

The beauty of addressing food deserts through walkability, mixed use, and smaller-format stores is that it creates a system that works better for everyone—just as with transportation improvements:

• Car owners benefit from less congestion around major grocery stores

• Walkable neighborhoods gain more vibrant commercial corridors

• Transit becomes more viable with neighborhood-integrated destinations

• Housing becomes more affordable with mixed-use efficiency

• Public health improves with better food access and more walking

• Local economies benefit from keeping food dollars in neighborhoods

This isn't a zero-sum game where improving food access for some means sacrificing convenience for others—quite the opposite. It's about creating a more efficient, equitable system that benefits the entire city.

The Path Forward

So what would it take to transform Philadelphia's food landscape? The same principles I've advocated for in transportation policy apply here:

1. Reform zoning to enable mixed-use development by right

2. Implement loading zones and smart curb management for deliveries

3. Prioritize walkability improvements in food desert neighborhoods

4. Offer tax incentives for fresh food retail in underserved areas

5. Move toward Land Value Taxation to encourage efficient development

6. Improve transit connectivity to existing grocery stores

7. Reduce parking requirements for food retail

None of these require massive new funding or technological breakthroughs. They simply require us to align our policies with our goals: ensuring every Philadelphian has convenient access to fresh, affordable food.

The Bottom Line

The solution to Philadelphia's food deserts isn't building more massive supermarkets with enormous parking lots. It's creating neighborhoods where food access is integrated into the fabric of everyday life—walkable, mixed-use communities where smaller-format grocery options can thrive alongside housing, jobs, and community spaces.

Just as we can't solve traffic by widening roads, we can't solve food access by doubling down on car-dependent grocery models. The answer lies in rethinking how our neighborhoods function at a fundamental level.

Let's make food deserts suck less—by making neighborhoods work better for everyone.