Food deserts in Pittsburgh

The Hill District of Pittsburgh has long struggled to attract a supermarket.  It is a true food desert, very poor, heavily burdened by empty lots and abandoned buildings, geographically isolated by steep hillsides from surrounding more prosperous Pittsburgh neighborhoods, and lacking in good secondary retail that might compensate for the lack of a supermarket.

Pittsburgh, July 2011 (Wilde)

Finally, after years of effort, a new major food supermarket is under construction.  I took this photo while on a long walk this week through the Hill District to visit the site of Rand's ongoing PHRESH study, one of the country's most ambitious research efforts to measure the effect of changes in local food retail on the ground in two low-income urban neighborhoods.  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described this study last year.