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Geographies Of Poverty And Retail: The Impact Of Supermarket Expansion On Food Insecurity In Cape Town, Stephen D. Peyton

Geography Honors Projects

The rapid rise in supermarkets in developing countries over the last few decades has resulted in the radical transformation of food retail systems. In the city of Cape Town, the introduction of supermarkets has coincided with rapid urbanization and increasing levels of food insecurity. In the context of a neoliberal approach toward economic development and redistribution, regulatory policies have largely ignored urban problems of food insecurity; therefore, retail modernization has become a largely unregulated market-based solution to improving food access for the poor. However, the introduction of formal food retail formats is often seen as conflicting with the informal food …