Identifying Gaps Between Food Supply and Demand Under Compact City Policies

Metropolitan areas typically experience urban sprawl, but some are actually beginning to face population declines, at the same time as planners have also been promoting the transition to compact cities with the goal of creating healthy cities. With all these changes, gaps in food supply and demand can emerge, as evidenced in Japan by the withdrawal of supermarkets from their catchment areas. This chapter defines the gap between food supply and demand as a spatial gap between accessibility on the demand side and food environment on the supply side. This study uses empirical analysis based on time-series data to examine where and how such gaps can arise. With Yokohama suburbs as the study area, two driving factors are examined: the decline of resident mobility in an aging society and changes in supermarket location that affect the availability of products and services. The study discovered a decrease in accessibility throughout the suburbs, especially in areas that were further away from train stations. Meanwhile, compact city policies promoted the development of more supermarkets in the vicinity of stations, but residential areas further away saw a rapid decrease in the number of supermarkets. An obvious conclusion is that the transition to compact cities may not necessarily contribute to the goal of creating healthy cities.