Improving Fairness and Equity by Minimizing Community Vulnerability to Food Accessibility: A Computational Urbanism Approach

Abstract

One important point of interest in urban areas is the food outlet, especially retailers that provide fresh and healthy food. Street markets, or tianguis are an affordable option throughout Mexico. Unfortunately, this type of outlet is sometimes inaccessible or significantly far to reach. This paper provides a vulnerability minimization framework to determine the optimal re-allocation of street markets by considering equity and reachability and the exact walking distance and demand by blocks in a city. The framework introduces new concepts of vulnerability along with a novel implementation of the Facility Location Problem. A case study has been used to exemplify the framework based on actual data from a region in Mexico City’s urban zone showing how significant improvements in equity and reachability can be achieved.