Spatial distribution of food retailers in amsterdam understanding community nutrition environment in the citys context m a

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES NGUYỄN VĂN QUỐC THÁI SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD RETAILERS IN AMSTERDAM Supervised by Asst Prof Aslan Zorlu Amsterdam – 2016 SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD RETAILERS IN AMSTERDAM Nguyễn Văn Quốc Thái Master thesis MSc Urban and Regional Planning Graduate School of Social Sciences University of Amsterdam Spatial distribution of food retailers in Amsterdam Understanding community nutrition environment in the city’s context Nguyễn Văn Quốc Thái Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Urban and Regional Planning, University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Dr Aslan Zorlu Second reader: Dr Wouter van Gent June 2016, Amsterdam ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Individual success is a myth No one succeeds all by herself – Pat Summitt I would like to express my genuine gratitude to my supervisor Dr Aslan Zorlu, whose nonchalant and encouraging supervision throughout the stressful course of this thesis has contributed greatly to its successful completion Being trapped at the Roeterseiland Campus has turned out to be less depressing than anticipated, thanks to his consistent (literal) presence and guidance My gratitude also goes to officials from Gemeente Amterdam, whose support has provided me with efficient materials for the thesis I would like to thank Martin van den Oever for our cheerful and helpful conversations, and Tony Dashorst, Cor Hylkema, and Steven Poppelaars for maintaining great patience and support for my continual requests for data I am also grateful for the support I receive from a number of academic staff at my faculty: Beatriz Pineda Revilla, for intriguing an interest in urban food system, Rowan Arundel, for living up to the expectation as a “GIS guy”, and Karin Pfeffer, for an inspiring problem-solving session This amazing year filled with eye-opening experiences and ridiculously extravagant spending on eating out would not have been possible without support from my family and friends The thesis is the best way I can possibly pay back their unconditional love and trust As a tribute to my home country’s amazing cuisine: Có thực vực đạo! CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1.1 THE RESEARCH 1.2 OUTLINE 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 2.1 FOOD RETAILERS AND URBAN NUTRITION ENVIRONMENT 2.2 FOODS RETAILERS AND URBAN ENVIRONMENT 2.3 THE CASE OF AMSTERDAM .15 2.4 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 18 METHODOLOGY AND DATA 21 3.1 APPROACHING GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD CONSUMPTION 21 3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN 23 3.3 OPERATIONALISATION 25 3.4 MAPPING DISTRIBUTION USING GIS 32 3.5 REGRESSION ANALYSIS 34 3.6 DATA 35 RESULTS 39 4.1 SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD RETAILERS 39 4.2 FOOD RETAILERS IN RELATIONSHIP WITH URBAN ENVIRONMENT 48 DISCUSSION 58 5.1 KEY FINDINGS .58 5.2 IMPLICATIONS: SCENARIOS FOR FOOD JUSTICE 64 CONCLUSION 69 6.1 SUMMARY .69 6.2 PRACTICAL CONCERNS 71 6.3 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 74 REFERENCES APPENDICES LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 2.1 Model of nutrition environment Figure 2.2 Conceptual framework 20 Figure 4.1 Type-based distribution of food retailers in Amsterdam, 2015 40 Figure 4.2 Number of food retailers per cell in Amsterdam, 2015 41 Figure 4.3 Number of chained supermarkets per cell in Amsterdam, 2015 42 Figure 4.4 Number of discount supermarkets per cell in Amsterdam, 2015 43 Figure 4.5 Number of non-chained grocers per cell in Amsterdam, 2015 44 Figure 4.6 Number of specialty food shops per cell in Amsterdam, 2015 45 Figure 4.7 Number of healthy food shops per cell in Amsterdam, 2015 46 Figure 4.8 Number of foreign food shops per cell in Amsterdam, 2015 47 Figure 5.1 Operation scheme of Buurtbuik 67 Figure 5.2 Meals at Buurtbuik 67 Figure 6.1 Number of supermarkets within 1000 metres (Schadenberg 2015) 68 Table Filters applied to dataset 24 Table Summary of GIS method 33 Table Summary of regression analysis 35 Table Descriptive statistics of chosen variables 37 Table Summary of variables 38 Table OLS regression models for number of retailers by type within 500 metre radius of CBS cells regressed on built and socio-economic environment characteristics 49 Table Logistic regression models for one or more food retailers of each category within 500 m radius of CBS cells regressed on built and socio-economic environment characteristics 49 Introduction INTRODUCTION 1.1 THE RESEARCH The thesis aims to explore the relationship between the distribution of food retailers and urban environment in Amsterdam It seeks to: (i) visualise spatial distribution of food retailers in the confined area of the Municipality of Amsterdam, (ii) explore the relationship between such distribution and Amsterdam urban environment, and (iii) discuss the implications of such findings for Amsterdam foodscape Of an explorative nature, the thesis is based on the intent to grasp an overview of the food retailing landscape, which has been widely discussed as greatly influential on a just urban environment (Alkon & Agyeman 2011), in the socio-economic context of the Municipality of Amsterdam The food system, particularly food consumption in this case, has been an important yet underexposed aspect of urban interrelated ecosystem (Johann et al 2014), which calls for illumination on food system’s role in the achievement of urban justice, a well-established body of research literature in urban studies With the increasing importance of food retailers in shaping consumption in urban areas (Wrigley et al 2003), efforts have been made on observing the relation between food consumption and changing urban environments (Shannon 2014; Kwate 2008) However, a majority of studies have chosen to pay attention to accessibility or availability of specific types of store, especially chained supermarkets, instead of a more holistic view that includes other type of food retailers Though chained supermarkets are indeed gaining popularity in when it comes to food shopping, they not represent the whole foodscape of the city, and they should not indeed (Steel 2009) In line with this, the thesis aims to explore the panoramic picture of Amsterdam to gain both preliminary insights as well as discovering the differences between different types of food retailers in the context of built and socio-economic environment of Amsterdam It aims to answer the following research question: How are different types of food retailers’ spatial distribution related to their surrounding built and socio-economic environment in the case of the Municipality of Amsterdam? Methodologically, the research adopts a quantitative methodology Firstly, GIS will be used both illustrate and describe distributional patterns of food retailers Secondly, regression analysis will be used to explore the relationship between these patterns and selected aspects of Spatial Distribution of Food Retailers in Amsterdam urban environments Following the use of quantitative analysis, these descriptive and explanatory observations will be used to explore the implications of the current foodscape in Amsterdam The contribution of the thesis is twofold; firstly, exploration of the relationship between food retailing and urban environments help make visible the role of food system in urban context, which still remains imperceptible both academically and politically until recently (Kierans & Haeney 2010); secondly, in addition to qualitative observations, development of a complementary quantitative methodology will help diversify angles from which food problems can be approached Thus, while not exploring original concepts or innovative methods, the thesis investigates a familiar concept yet from an under-researched aspect, using a combination of established methods The social relevance is implicated in a sense that the research topic is closely connected to urbanites, who are constantly exposed to food insecurity (Sadler et al 2015; Pothukuchi & Kaufman 1999) One of the biggest challenge to come for planning in the 21st century is ‘how to feed cities in a just, sustainable and culturally appropriate manner in the face of looming climate change, widening inequality and burgeoning hunger’ (Morgan 2015) In a broader discussion, food consumption has great implication for maintaining urban environment quality as well, for instance, influencing external resources dependency and water footprint, which is believed to be a few among many problematic features of contemporary food system (Vanham et al 2016) 1.2 OUTLINE The thesis is structured as follows The introduction chapter provides a brief overview of the thesis In the second chapter, the theoretical framework is set Based on concepts of food system, food retailers and urban environment, the theoretical framework is established, preceded as well as supported by discussion on the main debates in the literature This helps inform the selection of variables as well In addition, an overview of Dutch food retailing landscape is provided to address relevant features of Amsterdam food retailers The third chapter serves to describe in details the data and methodology employed First, the research design is discussed in order to set the research scope and provide the rationale behind the design Then, quantitative operationalisations of the main concepts, namely food retailers, built environment, and socio-economic environment are provided This helps define chosen variables and explain the intention, benefits as well as limits in these choices Next, two Introduction methods, namely GIS and regression analysis, are delineated After that, a detailed overview of data sources, data gathering, cleaning and transforming process is presented The fourth chapter provides the most important information of the thesis Using the results of mapping and regression analysis, I describe firstly the general patterns of distribution of food retailers, secondly the relationships between these patterns and the current context of Amsterdam, and thirdly the relationship with the change of such context from 2004 to 2015 Certain brief discussions/explanations are provided when necessary in this chapter as well The fifth chapter goes into further explanation, as well as trying to link the findings back to the discussed literature, as well as some information about the Dutch foodscape As food consumption is an extremely complex and multifaceted phenomenon, the explanation is inherent incomplete In some cases, due to lack of proper academic or expert opinion, explanation is subject to a certain degree of subjectivity (from the perception of a foreign student who has only spent roughly a year in Amsterdam) Still, interpretation is much needed as it would provide a necessary pre-condition for future research, and might be useful to set the stage for a deeper understanding of the observed patterns Therefore, in this chapter, best efforts are made in an attempt to understand how different types of food retailers are related to their surrounding and what might explain it, and more importantly, what is missing that is much needed for such an explanation Certainly not everything is explicable, and regression analysis, when applied to a cultural phenomenon like food consumption, does not guarantee perfectly comprehensible revelations promising to cure world hunger Still, both of the more comprehensive and less comprehensive all have their benefits, which would be used in the recommendation section The final chapter consists of three parts Firstly, the research question are revisited, summarising the main findings and discussions Secondly, practical concerns associated with chosen data and methods are mentioned at the end of the chapter Finally, recommendations for further research are made Theoretical framework THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK In this chapter, I will discuss different themes with two aims: (i) to construct the backbone theoretical framework, based on which research scope, hypotheses, and research questions are developed, and (ii) to provide a theoretical argument for my choices of variables, in addition to methodological one in the subsequent chapter Three themes will be addressed Firstly, the role of food consumption in urban context is outlined with relevant studies Based on this, a closer look is taken to examine the food retailers in relation to nutrition environments, using a conceptual framework of nutrition environment pioneered by Glanz et al (2005) Secondly, other urban environments are discussed in relation to food retailers, with attention being paid to how these can be observed Thirdly, some main features of Amsterdam foodscape literature are outlined in support for the fourth and final part, in which a conceptual framework is constructed 2.1 FOOD RETAILERS AND URBAN NUTRITION ENVIRONMENT 2.1.1 Urban food system Food system, while has been widely recognised for its essential role in the maintenance of urban ecosystem, has also been less visible than other systems, such as transportation, housing, employment or environment (Johann et al 2014) Similarly, while food is central to survival for all low-income urban residents, literature on urban inequality has tended to decenter food as a focus analysis (Miewald & Mccann 2014) More than mere nutrition input, the food system comprises ‘the chain of activities connecting food production, processing, distribution, consumption and waste management, as well as other associated regulatory institutions and activities’ (Journée 2011) This system holds critical implications for urban planning (Pothukuchi & Kaufman 1999; Morgan 2009), specifically food consumption (Bedore 2010; Pottinger 2013), usually regarded as a distinguished yet closely related coexistence of food production Food consumption itself is a broad terms, encompassing a broad ray of activities ranging from ‘buying food products and services and transporting them to preparing and eating food and finally disposing of the food wastes’ (Oosterveer & Spaargaren 2012) Efforts have been made by consumption geographers (Crewe 2001), highlighting the uneven geographies of power in regulating and producing citizens, urban spaces, and practices and objects of food ... extract information from geocoded data, with the aim to visualise the food retailing landscape in a systematic way, at which there has been hardly no attempt in the case of Amsterdam In addition,... employment and crime Further explanation on the use of these variables are provided in the methodology chapter 2.3 THE CASE OF AMSTERDAM Certainly, the Netherlands are not the most common name among.. .SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD RETAILERS IN AMSTERDAM Nguyễn Văn Quốc Thái Master thesis MSc Urban and Regional Planning Graduate School of Social Sciences University of Amsterdam Spatial distribution