Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate - Exploring Solutions for Underserved Communities | Food Access & Urban Planning Resources" (Note: Since the original title appears to be an academic/sociological book title rather than a typical e-commerce product, I've optimized it for discoverability while maintaining its scholarly tone. I added relevant keywords and a usage context about food access solutions.)

Ken Kolb’s book Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate is a must read! Kolb does so much more than the title reflects. Not only does he use in person interviews and participant observation to reveal the fallacies in the food desert debates, but his research illuminates the reasons that a decade or more of policies to address the health issues plaguing people who live in so-called food deserts have failed: as he argues, access to healthy food is a product of hundreds of years of structural racism. If we focus only on the food and not on the underpinnings that created food deserts our well-intentioned efforts will be doomed to fail. Kolb’s approach underscores the myriad reasons why qualitative research is critical to understanding and solving the most pressing social problems facing the country, especially problems rooted deeply in racism and social inequality. Kolb spent years listening to people who live in so-called food deserts, attending meetings with them, even working on a local farm as he attempted to understand why the policy approaches developed by folks who had never been to a food desert didn’t work. By centering the voices of the people who live in so-called food deserts, his research paints a vivid picture of not only the challenges but also of the resiliency of people in a way no other study of this kind has. Because of his careful research and deep commitment to food equality, and his willingness to challenge his own positionality, not only do we have a better understanding of the situation of Greenville, South Carolina, but of communities across the United States. The only pathway I see of successfully addressing the myriad health issues related to food consumption that millions of people living in the US experience begins with Ken Kolb’s book.