the origins of the food desert: urban inequality as ... · the origins of the food desert: urban...

The Origins of the Food Desert: Urban Inequality as Infrastructural Exclusion

Andrew Deener

Social Forces, Volume 95, Number 3, March 2017, pp. 1285-1309 (Article)

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The Origins of the Food Desert

The Origins of the Food Desert: Urban Inequalityas Infrastructural Exclusion

Andrew Deener, University of Connecticut

This article develops the concept of infrastructural exclusion as a form of urbaninequality through the case of the origins of the food desert in Philadelphia.Infrastructural exclusion refers to the reorganization of spatial and material

interdependence into a semi-autonomous and path-dependent force that separatesresources from those reliant on them. Building on archival research, it emphasizeshow social problems arise out of taken-for-granted relationships between urbandevelopment, population settlements, and distribution systems. Grocery chains wereinterdependent with urban neighborhoods in the early 1900s, but they came to partic-ipate in a fiercely competitive industry during a precarious period of urban decline,suburban growth, and changes in transportation systems. New industry conventionsabout profitability, involving higher-volume supplies and lower transaction costs,became embedded into the sociotechnical infrastructure. The reorganization of infra-structural interdependence as a semi-autonomous force constrained local businessdecision-making, led to high rates of financial insolvency, and contributed to theoverall decline of urban grocery markets. This approach to infrastructural exclusionprovides insights into the causes of a unique form of urban inequality.

IntroductionMillions of people live in geographic pockets without access to supermarkets, aproblem disproportionately impacting low-income communities and communitiesof color (Wrigley 2002; USDA 2009; McClintock 2011). Places without super-markets—what many call “food deserts”—lack affordable fresh fruits and vegeta-bles, as remaining corner stores are unable to procure and preserve wide varietiesof fresh foods (Lucan, Karpyn, and Sherman 2010; Dannefer et al. 2012). Thisarticle uses the case of the food desert to demonstrate the role of infrastructuralexclusion in producing urban inequality. It develops the relationship between

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The author would like to thank Rene Almeling, Claudio Benzecry, Marcus Hunter, Rob Jansen,Annette Lareau, Harvey Molotch, Jeremy Pais, Jon Wynn, and anonymous reviewers for helpful com-ments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. I acknowledge the generous research support from theRobert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program. Address correspondence con-cerning this article to Andrew Deener, University of Connecticut, Unit 1068, 344 Mansfield Road,Storrs, CT 06269, USA; phone: 860 486-4611; fax: 860-486-6356; email: [email protected]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved. For permissions,please e-mail: [email protected].

Social Forces 95(3) 1285–1309, March 2017doi: 10.1093/sf/sox001

Advance Access publication on 23 January 2017

The Origins of the Food Desert 1285

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organizations and infrastructures that facilitate, or in this case dislocate, urbaninterdependence.

Infrastructure operates according to a foundational sociological principle thatcertain features of everyday life are “seen but unnoticed” (Garfinkel 1967). Itpermeates so fully into daily life that it falls into the invisible background (Starand Ruhleder 1996; Edwards 2003). Public access to resources like food, water,and electricity depend on infrastructures connecting different social groups andgeographic places. Not until people experience breakdown—limited access toclean water, electrical blackouts, or the loss of grocery stores—does infrastruc-ture become seen as a public problem (Bowker and Star 1999; Graham andMarvin 2001).

The origins of the food desert are rooted in the reorganization of public andprivate infrastructures dating back to the 1930s in response to the changing spa-tial structure of population settlements and distribution systems. Private compa-nies were forced to navigate the uncertainty of new forms of social and technicalinterdependence between suburbanization, highway development, automobileand trucking mobility, and larger storage warehouses and retail markets. Thereorganization of infrastructural interdependence into a semi-autonomous forceled to fierce competition, economic mistakes, and financial insolvency amonglarge and small companies alike.

Studies of urban inequality stand to gain theoretically and empirically byfocusing on the reorganization of infrastructure as the connecting processbetween everyday experiences of deprivation and political-economic patterns.Archival research yields findings about how Philadelphia’s four largest grocerychains adapted to changes in the social and spatial environment. Despite at-tempts at building stores within city limits, including in segregated black neigh-borhoods, all four companies succumbed to infrastructural pressures based onregional distribution and suburban supermarkets as the most profitable model.Companies were forced to close down dozens of less profitable urban stores dur-ing a precarious period of change, giving rise to infrastructural exclusion as aform of deprivation in an era of advanced capitalism.

Infrastructural Systems and Urban DevelopmentInfrastructural systems make it possible to move materials and people betweenplaces, thus enabling population growth and market formation (Jackson 1985;Cronon 1991). As the link between sites of production and consumption, distri-bution infrastructures have influenced the health of local communities (Grahamand Marvin 2001; Gandy 2002). In the United States, the sociotechnical rela-tionships underlying the supply of key resources have expanded over time.Studying these expansions reveals how distinct resources become integrated andtaken for granted in everyday life. The regulation and standardization of infra-structural systems promotes equitable access of some resources but not others.

In advanced capitalist countries, large infrastructural systems like water and elec-tricity have become so pervasive that few live beyond their reach (Hughes 1987;Graham and Marvin 2001). These systems have attained near-universal coverage

1286 Social Forces 95(3)

into “networked homes” (Gordon 2016). Local problem-solving gave rise to tech-nical innovations, but over time “system builders” incorporated various adapta-tions into routine platforms (Hughes 1987; Edwards 2003). Public subsidies forregulating and standardizing these distribution systems facilitated equitable access.

Yet infrastructure is more than a stable “system of substrates—railroad lines,pipes and plumbing, electrical power plants, and wires” (Star 1999). Private firms,governmental organizations, and populations can also become interdependentthrough incremental and contingent sociotechnical expansions (Bowker and Star1999; Molotch 2003). While food distribution is essential to human reproduction,it is not generally considered a public infrastructural system. Instead, the wide-spread mass-merchandising food system evolved as a hybrid sociotechnicalarrangement of public and private interests operating at different scales.

The history of the food system includes moments of centralized state planningof different aspects of production, distribution, and consumption. The US FarmBill has widely subsidized growers of commodity crops like corn and soy, whichhas stabilized the economic pursuit of high-volume manufacturing of thousandsof processed and packaged products. On the consumer side, low-income familieshave received benefits through the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department ofAgriculture (USDA) have also established product safety and quality standards.

Goods distribution also received early public support to facilitate market con-nections. Initially the federal Bureau of Public Roads was housed in the USDA,before moving to the Department of Commerce and ultimately the Departmentof Transportation. The bureau oversaw national road and highway constructionto improve commercial interdependencies. Over time, policymakers replacedlocal ad hoc road construction with “exacting engineering standards” to betterintegrate rural farmers and urban markets into a “national consumer culture.”A combination of state and federal financing led to more than three hundredthousand miles of roads and highways by 1930 (Hamilton 2008). System-building continued with the passing of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956,which further paved the way for suburban growth, public dependency on carsand trucks, and new economies of scale (Jackson 1985).

Public investments in roads and highways opened up more flexible productmobility options. Yet food distribution remained distinct from publicly regulatedutilities, in that the government did not establish clear standards for equitableaccess. Instead, private companies navigated the competitive terrain of changingdistribution methods and new territorial developments in the suburbs andbeyond. Organizational decision-makers were forced to adjudicate betweentechnical innovations, market formats, and market and warehouse locations. Asthe mass-merchandising system solidified, it constrained options available togrocery corporations and shaped a unique form of urban inequality.

Urban Inequality as Infrastructural ExclusionInfrastructural exclusion occurs when sociotechnical interdependence developsinto a semi-autonomous and path-dependent force that generates unequal access


to resources. Several perspectives about the emergence and persistence of urbandeprivation locate infrastructural development as an outcome of political-economic organization. For instance, scholars identify macro-level political-eco-nomic policies and organized neoliberal ideological regimes that have reconfi-gured global capital flows and local territorial development. The macropolitical-economic process is seen as causing uneven infrastructural expansion(Harvey 1982; Massey 1995[1984]; Brenner and Theodore 2002).

Scholars of growth machines shift the political-economic level to place-basedcoalitions. Powerful actors are described as making strategic choices about infra-structural projects that advantage some local groups over others (Logan andMolotch 1987; Pais and Elliott 2008). Political-economic perspectives also pro-vide background explanations of urban isolation in micro-level ethnographies.Abandoned lots, boarded-up factories, and neighborhoods with few amenitiescontextualize fine-grained studies of emerging cultures of disorganization andreorganization in poor neighborhoods (Anderson 1990; Bourgois 1995).

Studies of declining retail and food access in cities adopt similar analytical ap-proaches. Some studies bridge together changes in capitalism and inequalitythrough macro-level political-economic theories of urban disinvestment. Forinstance, large food corporations, responding to national and global policies,are described as strategically following the money out of cities (e.g., McClintock2011). Scholars also focus on place-based “retail redlining,” in which retailersadopt deliberate discriminatory practices and avoid neighborhoods of poor peo-ple and people of color (Eisenhauer 2001; D’Rozario and Williams 2005; Kwateet al. 2013). Qualitative studies of food justice movements shift to the microlevel to address how people respond to and resist deprivation (Nairn andVitiello 2010; Gottlieb and Joshi 2010; Kato, Passidomo, and Harvey 2014).

Infrastructural exclusion, although distinct from these approaches to urbaninequality, also complements them in important ways. Infrastructural transfor-mation does not solely stem from strategic political-economic goals, the domina-tion of large corporations over smaller businesses, or ideological global regimesover community interests. Rather it involves an incremental, highly competitive,and economically contingent process of inscribing organizational routines intochanging systems. Infrastructural exclusion emphasizes how sociotechnical rela-tionships materialize into a semi-autonomous and path-dependent force thatcompels organizational mistakes and unanticipated consequences.1

Historical sociologists argue that path dependency emerges from contingentcircumstances or critical events (Sewell 1996; Mahoney 2000; Mahoney andThelen 2010). However, key mechanisms—in this case, infrastructural interde-pendence—reinforce the adoption of certain economic conventions over others(Mahoney 2000). The following analytical objectives demonstrate how thisinfrastructural perspective explains unequal access to goods. The first showshow contingent circumstances—the Great Depression, transportation innova-tions, and suburban development—generated competing models of distributionthat provoked uncertainties among decision-makers. The second examines howorganizational decisions became inscribed into the relationship between publicand private infrastructures. The final objective demonstrates how infrastructural


interdependence constrained decision-making about market development, led tocorporate financial collapses, and created underserved spaces. Together theseobjectives underscore how meso-level mechanisms mediate between political-economic transformations and local experiences of deprivation.

DataThis article draws upon the collections of Temple’s Urban Archives (TUA),Hagley Museum and Library (Hagley), Philadelphia Public Library (PPL),Philadelphia City Archives (PCA), US Censuses, and secondary sources. Thedata analysis connects different social and spatial levels by focusing on relation-ships between local organizational processes and regional and national distribu-tion infrastructures and population settlements.

Collections of clippings from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, PhiladelphiaInquirer, and the online archives of the Philadelphia Tribune document localbusiness narratives and activities: company transactions, executive reactions tomarket trends and population changes, and openings and closings of stores inthe Philadelphia area between 1900 and 1980. Executives wrote local opinionpieces and memos to city officials that illuminate decision-making processes dur-ing periods of industry transformation. Newspaper articles also documentedlocal processes and effects of corporate bankruptcies and insolvency that re-sulted in widespread store closings.

Company annual reports establish connections between local narratives andindustry-wide processes, such as investments in changing building types, organi-zational approaches, and company profit structures. The most extensive annualreports are from the Philadelphia-based company Food Fair, between 1951 and1970 (See table 1). Sample annual reports from the American Stores Companyand A&P confirmed themes about changing corporate profit structures andorganizational changes. Local newspapers also covered company profits andlosses, which supplemented annual reports (See table 2).

Additional reports and secondary sources illustrate macro-level patterns ofurban and regional development. The US Censuses provide evidence of popula-tion decentralization in Philadelphia’s metropolitan area. US CommerceDepartment and Federal Trade Commission reports, along with secondary his-torical sources, documented national and regional trends in the grocery industry,suburban development, and highway construction.

Philadelphia as a Changing Market ContextPhiladelphia is a strategic research site to understand infrastructural exclusion. By1920, Philadelphia was one of three cities in the United States—New York andChicago were the others—with over a million residents. Like other large cities,Philadelphia’s growth decelerated after 1930, before its multi-decade period ofpopulation decline following 1950 (See figure 1). Suburbanization, deindustriali-zation, housing redlining, white flight, and middle-class outmigration isolatedpoorer African Americans (Hillier 2003; McKee 2008; Hunter 2013). However,


Philadelphia was racially segregated before the food desert problem arose. In fact,Philadelphia’s four largest chains built supermarkets in segregated black neighbor-hoods (see figure 2). This point highlights the importance of studying the reorgani-zation of infrastructural interdependencies as a distinct form of urban deprivation.

Focusing on the four largest grocery chains in Philadelphia illustrates the transi-tion from urban market interdependence to infrastructural exclusion. TheAmerican Stores Company, also known as Acme, was Philadelphia’s largest gro-cery chain in the early 1900s, ultimately growing into a national chain. With overa thousand markets in the region by 1917, its local motto was “No Resident ofPhiladelphia or Camden could live more than three blocks from an Acme market”(“Chain Store” 1917). The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, also knownas A&P, was the nation’s largest chain retailer. It had fifteen thousand stores by1930, including many in Philadelphia. Penn Fruit, a smaller local chain, started asa greengrocer selling fruits and vegetables and grew into a full-service supermarketcompany. Food Fair, a regional chain headquartered in Philadelphia, became oneof the fastest-growing companies on the East Coast.

Table 1. Food Fair, Inc., Sales Figures 1951 to 1970

Year Sales in millions Net profits in millionsProfit margins in cents

on the dollar

1951 225 4.9 2.18

1952 282 4.0 1.43

1953 318 4.8 1.51

1954 376 6.1 1.61

1955 444 7.7 1.74

1956 517 8.9 1.73

1957 592 9.0 1.52

1958 655 10.1 1.55

1959 734 10.4 1.42

1960 771 11.4 1.48

1961 840 11.9 1.41

1962 923 11.1 1.20

1963 1,003 10.4 1.03

1964 1,105 10.0 0.91

1965 1,120 9.2 0.82

1966 1,205 12.5 1.04

1967 1,297 12.0 0.93

1968 1,372 10.8 0.79

1969 1,555 12.0 0.78

1970 1,762 10.6 0.60

Source: Food Fair Annual Reports, Archives of the Hagley Library.


Contingent Circumstances and Organizational UncertaintyStudies of suburbanization identify how changing transportation infrastruc-tures influenced decentralized commercial growth. They show how publicand private investments precipitated a new “drive-in culture” built upon high-ways, automobiles, parking lots, and shopping centers (Jackson 1985; also seeHayden [2004]). Yet a suburban commercial culture did not initially cohere asa distinct sociotechnical system. The chain grocery store was an urban neigh-borhood innovation of the early 1900s’ railroad age, but changing economic

Table 2. American Stores Company Sales Figures 1949–1969 (excludes 1958–1960; 1962–1965;1967)

Year Sales in millions Net profits in millionsProfit margins in cents

on the dollar

1949 417 6.7 1.6

1950 470 7.1 1.5

1951 521 5.1 0.97

1952 542 5.1 0.94

1953 604 7.5 1.2

1954 625 7.0 1.1

1955 655 8.3 1.26

1956 780 9.7 1.24

1957 837 10.5 1.25

1961 1,011 10.76 1.06

1966 1,200 10.45 0.87

1968 1,293 8.33 0.64

1969 1,479 10.7 0.72

Source: Evening Bulletin clippings and Annual Reports of American Stores Company, TUA.

Figure 1. Population changes: Philadelphia and surrounding nine-county area, 1850–2010

0

1

2

3

4

5

1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Po

pu

lati

on

(in

mill

ion

s)

Census Year

Philadelphia

Delaware Valley (excludingPhiladelphia)

Source: US Censuses, 1850–2010.


conditions, transportation systems, and population settlements complicatedfood-marketing goals.

Contingent circumstances generated multiple decision-making options (Mahoney2000). Events external to organizations created uncertainties (Vaughan 1999;Akrich, Callon, and Latour 2002). Organizational actors were forced to negotiatebetween established routines and new information (March and Olsen 1975; Levittand March 1988; Cohen and Levinthal 1990). This section highlights two ques-tions facing grocery executives: whether to adopt the supermarket system andwhether to build stores in cities or suburbs.

Supermarketing or Not?The decision to carry both fresh and dry commodities in stores altered food dis-tribution. Early neighborhood grocers sold mostly dry goods and rarely ob-tained fresh commodities that did not keep well without refrigeration. The freshsystem lacked the coordinated efficiency of dry goods distribution. Downtownproduce wholesalers procured fruits and vegetables and sold out their stockdaily to greengrocers and street vendors. In contrast, grocery chains developedthousands of stores within city limits by 1920, enabling inventive cost-cuttingtechniques for shelf-stable commodities like grains, sugar, tea, and coffee. Theybypassed dry grocery wholesalers by storing products in large warehouses and

Figure 2. Sample openings of Acme, A&P, Food Fair, and Penn Fruit supermarkets inPhiladelphia, 1956 to 1976, in the context of neighborhood by percent black

Source: Basemap provided by ESRI; Census tract data from Geolytics Neighborhood ChangeDatabase, 1970 US Census; supermarket openings from Temple Urban Archives clippings.


delivering them directly to stores. They also standardized store layouts to cutdown on time use in off-loading deliveries (Mayo 1993; Levinson 2011).

These efficiency techniques were not always well received. The largestnational chains faced opposition from small-town business owners and farmersfearing corporate expansion. Congressmen representing these districts labeledthem as monopolies. However, chains built alliances with struggling coopera-tive farmers and labor unions during the Great Depression, which slowedopposition (Ingram and Hayagreeva 2004). These new relationships allowedthem to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables directly from farmers. They by-passed produce wholesalers just as they had previously bypassed dry goodswholesalers.

This transition did not immediately lead to a supermarket system. Chain gro-cers first introduced the “combination store” with more food varieties while re-taining the clerk service of pulling products from shelves for customers. One outof three chain outlets was a combination store in 1929. The proportion grew to50 percent by 1939 and 60 percent by 1946, at which point 15 percent of salescame from fresh produce (US Department of Commerce 1946).

Combination stores were bigger than previous corner stores, but not nearlythe size of another innovation of that period: the “super market.” In 1930, KingKullen opened in Jamaica, Queens—the first East Coast supermarket. It adver-tised lower prices during the Depression. In an abandoned garage, MichaelCullen divided sections for dry groceries, meat, baked goods, and dairy. Heleased remaining space to purveyors of produce, paint, hardware, and autoaccessories (Charvat 1961). Cullen called his store “the world’s greatest pricewrecker,” and followed the logic of “pile it high and sell it cheap” (Pelroth2009). Big Bear, founded in 1933 by former merchandising and wholesaling ex-ecutives, expanded these principles in a fifty-thousand-squarefoot abandonedauto plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Their high sales volumes and profits awedcompetitors. It took one hundred A&P stores in the surrounding area to matchits volume (Mayo 1993).

The supermarket spread mostly as an entrepreneurial venture. The trade pub-lication Super Market Merchandising, founded in 1936, provided managementtips for new business owners. The Super Market Institute, a trade association,created “a degree of unity” in the industry (Charvat 1961, 26–28). In 1936,1,200 supermarkets operated in 32 states. Within the next year, the total almosttripled, to more than three thousand stores operating in 47 states (Zimmerman1941). Introducing new economies of scale helped reduce the percentage of dis-posable income Americans spent on food from 21 percent in 1930 to 16 percentin 1940 (Pelroth 2009). “Cheap food” had arrived.

Retail leaders were divided over whether to invest in supermarkets or combi-nation stores. Smaller chains like Food Fair and Penn Fruit, without nationalmarket infrastructures to convert, invested in the new supermarket approach.Food Fair started as a single corner store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in theearly 1900s. It completely converted to self-service supermarkets by 1935 andrelocated its headquarters to Philadelphia. This early transition enabled the com-pany to succeed in a crowded market space (Gillespie 1978).


In 1933, the Friedland brothers owned and operated 25 Food Fair combina-tion stores. They observed changing market trends and began experimentation.In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, they opened a ten-thousand-square-foot garagethat warehoused more varieties and quantities than was typical of that era. Theygrossed $15,000 in the first week. They quickly opened another in Reading,Pennsylvania. Their two self-service supermarkets sold a higher volume than therest of their 25 stores combined. They closed their smaller stores, moved theirheadquarters to Philadelphia, and began building supermarkets in that territory(Gillespie 1978).

Companies like Food Fair, and Penn Fruit, entered the industry at the righttime. They gained consumer support in Philadelphia, which enabled them toadvance into new suburbs. The Friedland brothers opened a hundred moresupermarkets by 1948. They increased the rate of growth the following decade,leading the New York Times to label Food Fair the “fastest growing chain” inthe grocery industry. Between 1950 and 1955, Food Fair opened an additionalhundred outlets, and then a hundred more in the two following years. By theend of the decade, Food Fair totaled 367 stores in nine states, from Connecticutto Florida, with sales over $600 million a year. Just like national chains, theydeveloped multi-state economies of scale, except at a much higher volume perstore (Fetridge 1951; Nagle 1955; “Food Fair Plans Firm” 1955; “Food FairAnnounces” 1958).

Executives studied trends in suburban development and consumer preferencesto find new profit-making options. George Friedland, the president of Food Fair,wrote in 1953 that retail growth beyond the urban core was necessary due tohigh birth rate, low death rate, immigration, and a 2 percent total increase in thenation’s population. He established a store control and research department toprepare statistical reports on all dimensions of the industry: sales, profits, andexpenses; consumer habits; and demographic and geographic reports on thechanging population distribution (Food Fair Stores 1956). He noticed changesin where consumers bought food and in what they ate. The supermarket, henoted, was becoming integral to US consumption:

The bread and potato eaters of the ’30’s have become…the steak andvegetable eaters of today. Plenty of food and a growing demand indicatefurther increase in retail food sales and further gains in supermarketsales in particular. The supermarket, which has grown from compara-tive insignificance in the past quarter-century, now accounts for themajor portion of total retail sales. (Friedland and Cooke 1953)

Friedland found a Wall Street firm to underwrite a growth program that trans-formed the company into a retail innovator (Sikora 1971; Nagle 1955). In 1955,Food Fair established a separate real estate company to develop and manageshopping centers within and beyond city limits. Food Fair Properties purchasedland, constructed commercial centers, leased spaces to different merchants, andpositioned their own stores as anchors in these shopping hubs. Within the firstyear of operation, Food Fair planned to construct 23 shopping centers in


dispersed areas and developed a distribution infrastructure to continuously stockhigh volumes in all of them (Food Fair Stores 1956).

A&P and American Stores, two of the nation’s four largest food retailers, didnot pursue the supermarket model at first. In 1936, national chains only cau-tiously experimented with it. They delayed—constrained by established organi-zational routines and prior investments in infrastructure. Initially, theyconverted dry grocery departments with packaged goods to self-service, becausethey believed consumers could handle branded products. Slowly, they intro-duced self-service into produce, dairy, baked goods, and other departments. Asthey opened new stores, they integrated the self-service philosophy into everydepartment (Zimmerman 1941). Changing spatial and income dynamics of USpopulation settlement caused them to convert, but they were too late.

American Stores (Acme) had been the largest chain in Philadelphia since theearly 1900s and grew into the fourth-largest chain in the nation. In 1947, how-ever, the majority of its stores still had clerks pulling products from shelves.Only 37 percent of its nearly two thousand stores were self-service supermarkets(Newman 1957). They fell behind in profit margins too. The company started toconvert to supermarkets in 1941, but during the next two decades they still hadnot completed the transformation. By 1957, they finally moved full force,shrinking the number of stores from almost two thousand to about nine hun-dred, with 88 percent self-service (“Acme Chain 1955”; Newman 1957;“American Stores” 1957).

Similar to Food Fair’s earlier conversion, American Stores’ sales figures doubleddespite the striking reduction in total number of outlets (see table 2). Yet reorga-nizing its infrastructure was expensive. In 1958, 95 percent of its stores were self-service supermarkets and the company reported its highest sales figures in history,but due to incurred costs it slipped to ninth in profit margins out of the nation’s 12largest grocery chains. In this competitive industry, cents on the dollar couldinhibit economic success. In 1946, American Stores netted almost two cents on thedollar; by 1958, it earned only 1.25 cents per dollar. Paul Cupp, the companypresident, raised concerns about remaining clerk-service stores and costs associ-ated with reorganization. “We’re not content with being ninth in profit margins,”he said. “We have more obsolescence than we should have in our stores.” Hedescribed plans to eliminate clerk-service stores by the end of the decade.“Ultimately only a few of our stores will not be self-service—in small, isolatedcommunities where the old-fashioned store is profitable and desired by our custo-mers” (Gaige 1958; “American Stores” 1957).

Urban or Suburban?Between 1950 and 1970 the nation’s total disposable income more than tripled,from $206.9 billion to $629.7 billion (Grocery Industry Barometer 1970).Companies sought to profit from the largest concentration of consumers withthe highest disposable incomes—those residing in the suburbs. Mass consump-tion, automobile mobility, interstate highway development, and suburbanizationwere mutually reinforcing. The more flexible highway-bound trucking economy


replaced rail distribution, as it was better equipped to directly haul goods from“loading dock to unloading dock” (Hamilton 2008).

During this period, companies built supermarkets in both cities and suburbs,not strategically avoiding urban centers at first—and this was true even for theprescient expanders like Food Fair and Penn Fruit. The map in figure 2 showsthat Philadelphia’s four largest grocery companies built new supermarkets in thecity between 1956 and 1976, including stores in majority black neighborhoods.Even as suburbs grew, executives believed urban markets were profitable.

Food Fair, for instance, demolished the Surpass Leather Company factory atNinth and Allegheny in North Philadelphia, constructing a large supermarket inits stead. It then opened a 27,000-square-foot supermarket in West Philadelphiain a new shopping center. They started a trend of building new urban supermar-kets to replace multiple smaller stores, even developing a new distribution centerin a formerly abandoned part of South Philadelphia. The eight-hundred-thou-sand-square-foot warehouse was accessible to new highway and bridge connec-tions, could handle 115 tractor-trailers at a time, and serviced 150 stores in theregion. Louis Stein, the company president, said, “We think we owe somethingto the city. We came to Philadelphia 22 years ago with a small warehouse at58th Street, and Grays Avenue…doing a $6 million a year business. We expectto do $800 million in 1959” (“Food Fair Buys Surpass Plant” 1955; “Food Fairto Open Baltimore Av. Market,” 1958; “Food Fair Takes Big Site” 1959).

Penn Fruit followed Food Fair’s model (City of Philadelphia Memorandum1953). Penn Fruit opened its first store in 1927 at 52nd and Market Street, oper-ating as a fruit and vegetable vendor servicing this West Philadelphia neighbor-hood. Besides special attention to produce, the store’s founders, Samuel Cookeand Morris Kaplan, experimented with a sixteen-thousand-square-foot super-market in 1932 at Broad and Grange Streets, claiming the first self-service super-market in Philadelphia’s city limits. Adding to the produce, they offered seafood,meat, poultry, a delicatessen department, a bakery, and grocery departmentswith a broad assortment of packaged goods (“High Principles” 1956).

Penn Fruit’s first supermarket was uniquely “urban.” With no parking lot, itdiffered from suburban supermarkets, strategically fitting into this NorthPhiladelphia neighborhood (Garrison 2013). Penn Fruit expanded on thisapproach. In 1941, the company opened at the intersection of 19th and MarketStreets in the city’s business district—again without a parking lot. Still, theydeveloped an information infrastructure for high-volume distribution. The com-pany studied transportation statistics in relation to necessary sales volumes,determining that 170,000 trolley passengers and eighteen thousand automobilescame through this intersection daily. They converted this former wholesalewarehouse into a 46,700-square-foot supermarket (Garrison 2013).

Penn Fruit’s urban model gradually became outdated, however. SamuelCooke shifted his problem-solving framework in response to suburban develop-ment and changing modes of transportation. Cooke observed “the great resettle-ment of the population, increasing use of the automobile, greater emphasis onhome living, an increase in the number of children per family, the home freezer,and a more casual way of life.” He argued that food executives must recognize


“the full significance of automobile shopping” by providing more parking facili-ties to handle more people “converging from greater distance” and thereby oper-ate as a “one stop shop” for more types of merchandise (Friedland and Cooke1953). The company started building supermarkets in urban and suburban loca-tions with parking lots.

By 1956, Penn Fruit had 41 stores and grew to more than seventy stores overthe next two decades. The company expanded into the suburbs and as far awayas Delaware and Maryland, but also opened new stores in Philadelphia, such asstores in majority black neighborhoods at 22nd and Lehigh Streets in NorthPhiladelphia and 48th and Pine Streets in West Philadelphia. Penn Fruit alsotransformed its first store at 52nd and Market Streets to rival Food Fair’s newmarket, even as the neighborhood demographics changed around the store fromwhite to black and the location stood at the cross-section of many black-ownedbusinesses (“High Principles” 1956; “Center City” 1972).

The national chains followed the smaller local and regional companies, aschanging population settlements opened up new economic prospects, includingexpansions into California and the West. American Stores acquired theCalifornia chain Alpha Beta, but it also opened Acme markets in suburbanPennsylvania and on Lehigh Avenue in the Kensington section of NorthPhiladelphia—already considered one of the poorest and most racially segre-gated neighborhoods in the city—with 11,435 square feet of selling area, tencheckout booths, 102 feet of frozen food cases, and a parking lot for 83 cars.They opened up additional markets in other sections of the city too: NortheastPhiladelphia and South Philadelphia, including one in a working-class neighbor-hood on 25th Street, between Reed and Wharton Streets, where 85,000 squarefeet allowed for 16,800 square feet of shopping space and a parking lot for 155automobiles (“Acme Opens First Store” 1962; “Acme Opening Store” 1964;“New Acme Market Planned” 1965; “Acme Plans Shopping Mart” 1966;“New Acme Opened” 1966).

A&P sought to regain its market position by investing in cities and suburbstoo. A&P introduced a giant regional market in the Springfield Shopping Centerservicing residents of upper-income suburbs like Springfield, Media, Drexel Hill,and Haverford. The company also remodeled an outdated store in the majorityblack North Philadelphia Olney neighborhood, converting it to a 100 percentself-service market, adding air-conditioning, new flooring, a new meat depart-ment, additional dairy cases, grocery tables, fresh produce, and new checkoutservices (“New A&P Store” 1957; “Remodeled A&P” 1957).

A decade later, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, A&P partneredwith Reverend Leon Sullivan. Sullivan, a local religious and political leader, ini-tiated his “10–36 plan” to overcome abandonment and poverty in black neigh-borhoods. Congregants from his Zion Baptist Church contributed ten dollarsfor 36 months to finance new developments such as an apartment complex andshopping centers (Rhodes 1970). By 1967, 650 congregants had contributed tofinance Progress Plaza in North Philadelphia. The 186,600-square-foot shoppingcenter had parking facilities for three hundred cars and negotiated leases withcommercial tenants, including A&P (“School in Shopping Center” 1967).


Sullivan described this as the first partnership between a national food chain anda black-owned shopping center (“A&P Will Build Supermarket” 1967). Manyneighborhoods were desperate for new services and job opportunities, andsupermarket companies opened new outlets (see figure 2).

Reproducing the Suburban Supermarket InfrastructureContingent circumstances compelled firms to begin developing suburban super-markets. Yet companies did not immediately close down urban access. Eventsand organized actions became inscribed into a new “sociotechnical ensemble”(Bijker 1995). Firms incrementally invested in an interdependent system madeup of bureaucratic organizations, distribution warehouses, logistical technolo-gies, trucking fleets, shopping centers anchored by supermarkets, and employeetraining in new technologies and product standards. This infrastructural systemlocked in profit-making conventions and forced firms into precarious economicpositions. Urban stores became less viable in the process.

High-Volume and Low-Margin Distribution InfrastructureSupermarket firms invested in information and technical infrastructures to maxi-mize profits. They used demographic knowledge about where to build storesand warehouses and gained technical proficiency at procuring, consolidating,and moving thousands of commodities to hundreds of stores in multiple loca-tions at the same time. They spent millions on building larger stores and ware-houses and training employees to handle higher volumes of different kinds ofgoods: fresh, frozen, boxed, and canned goods as well as growing amounts ofnon-food products. The industry sold $40 billion worth of goods in 1952. By1969, industry sales exceeded $62 billion (Stein 1970).

A&P executives described the company’s distribution system as its “heartbeat”and “intelligence center” that could “assemble goods from all over the world”and “anticipate” stores’ needs in many locations. A&P’s 1962 Annual Reportstates:

All suppliers obviously can’t deliver their wares to each A&P super mar-ket directly for a very simple reason: the hundreds of delivery trucksinvolved would surround every store with a monumental traffic jam. So,instead, suppliers ship their products to A&P’s warehouse…[thus] com-bining these items and re-shipping them to individual stores in the swift-est and most economical way. The company’s warehouses arestrategically located close to the center of specific distribution areas toreduce this secondary transportation cost to a minimum, and they arealso equipped to check all goods to ascertain that they meet our de-mands for high standards of quality. (Great Atlantic & Pacific TeaCompany of America 1962)

Improvements in handling efficiency allowed companies to augment store sizes.Stores multiplied from ten to fifteen to more than thirty thousand square feet in


less than a decade. Louis Stein, CEO of Food Fair in 1970, noted, “Anothertrend that will continue…is the increased size of the supermarket. The sales areaof tomorrow’s supermarket may be 30,000 to 35,000 square feet, more thandouble the present-day store.” Larger stores allowed for more experimentationin developing and manufacturing new products. Stein said Food Fair will carryeight thousand items, “half of which were not available ten years ago” (Stein1970). John Park, American Stores president, concurred: “Today’s market con-tains about 8,000 items, tomorrow’s will likely have twice that” (Park 1971).Stores already incorporated many food varieties, but new categories like “conve-nience foods” increased products designed for quick and easy preparation,including “pre-packed” meats and produce (Park 1971). Non-food commoditiesalso spread: “health and beauty” aisles became highly profitable, and “hard-ware” sections incorporated paint and electrical home goods such as lightbulbs(Evening Bulletin 1974).

The high-volume and high-variety retail system cemented low profit margins.Tables 1 and 2 show how Food Fair and American Stores—a regional chain anda national chain—continuously increased sales volumes. However, when netprofits stabilized in the mid-1960s, profit margins sank to less than 1 percent.Capturing higher sales volumes became critical to profit maximization withdecreasing profit margins. Companies tried to stand out through experimenta-tion, but they also had to imitate successful innovations so as not to fall behind.Faulty decisions and advancing positions by competitors easily led to losses inthis infrastructural system.

The supermarket distribution infrastructure was expensive to maintain.Savings from high-volume purchases did not offset operational costs in certaintypes of stores and locations. The scale of distribution grew in direct tensionwith the costs to maintain profitability in aging markets. Three types of situa-tions represent how the reorganization of infrastructure contributed to massclosings and the origins of the food desert.

Exogenous Shocks and Local ImpactsLarge companies put pressure on smaller companies. Penn Fruit, the smallest ofthe four chains, went bankrupt in 1975 after suffering losses from a two-yearprice war. Some businesses cut product prices to increase store foot traffic. A&Pslashed its prices in competitive locations like Philadelphia. They developed lossleaders, which sold below cost, making up profits through higher margins onother products and from more profitable stores in less competitive regions. Forexample, A&P paid 25cents for two tomato-soup cans, but then sold each fornine cents. Still identifying with the urban environment, A&P also convertedsome stores into a “warehouse economy model.” Stores displayed canned goodsand groceries in shipping cartons and sold produce from crates in order to cutdown on labor costs (Prokop 1972).

Price wars became localized, with extreme inter-organizational competition incities like Philadelphia. Penn Fruit, with less access to reserves, struggled tomaintain profitable sales volumes, losing customers to lower priced competitors


and more aggressive companies like A&P Prokop 1972; Milletti 1975; Sama1975). James Cooke, the company chairman, said in 1975:

Penn Fruit, which operated profitably for many decades, suffered severelosses because of a supermarket price war in Philadelphia that lasted fortwo years. Unlike our major chain competitors, the great bulk of ourstores are in the Philadelphia area and we could not draw on profitsfrom other sections of the country not affected by the severe local com-petitive conditions. Since the price war, Penn Fruit has not had the avail-able cash resources to restore sales volume lost during that period ofunprecedented competition. (Holland 1975b).

Penn Fruit was stuck between two poles. It needed to invest in infrastructuralexpansion to match the buying power and sales volumes of larger companies.Yet it faced aggressive pressures from larger chains, which augmented risks ofsuch investments. The company could not get ahead. It closed almost half of itsstores in 1975 alone after losing $32.2 million in that year (Drill 1976). By1976, Penn Fruit could no longer afford to stock its shelves and closed down itsremaining 35 supermarkets and warehouse facilities. Within the year, it had sold17 stores to Food Fair. Eleven were in the city of Philadelphia, reflecting someexecutives’ continued belief that the density of smaller outlets could support aprofitable volume of goods (Knox 1976; Prokop 1976; “Food Fair May BuyPenn Fruit” 1976; Herman 1975).

Innovations That FailTwo years after purchasing the remaining Penn Fruit markets, Food Fair filedfor bankruptcy. Trying to capture volume advantages, Food Fair tried to mergefood and non-food industries into a new market type. They were decades aheadof the mounting trend of the 1990s when Wal-Mart opened “Supercenters” thatintegrated supermarkets and discount stores. Food Fair never mastered the dis-tribution infrastructure supporting this model, and the company faltered.

In 1958, Food Fair supermarkets carried 20 percent non-food commodities.Executives experimented with increasing the proportion. The Evening Bulletinreported, “Food and non-food lines will be interspersed with each other so thata woman hunting lettuce will find herself looking at dresses and slips. If it’sketchup she’s after, she may find herself walking through sweaters, shirts, stock-ings, summer furniture, irons, mixers, and other household items.” Executivesjustified the approach, claiming that the goal of super-marketing is “high salesvolume under one roof” and carrying a non-food line of “disposable” productswith “high turnover” is “an extension of the idea” (Newman 1958).

Not all agreed that this innovation was prudent. Cupp, the American Storespresident, said, “From all the talk you hear…you’d think selling non-food itemsis a great, expanding deal. It isn’t that at all. Selling these items requires differenttalents, besides investment in inventories, space, and fixtures” (Gaige 1958). Inother words, Food Fair needed sound organizational methods to build and man-age the infrastructural interdependencies between manufacturers, distributors,


and consumers. In 1961, Food Fair further invested in this infrastructure by pur-chasing J. M. Fields, a 79-unit discount department store chain. Over the nextdecade, the company worked to connect supermarkets and discount stores intothe new retail model. Yet, between 1975 and 1977, in the face of continuingprice wars, Food Fair lost $33.4 million. Executives tried pouring an additional$100 million from the more profitable food sector into renovations of this newmerchandising approach, to no avail (Knox 1978).

Food Fair closed down smaller, less profitable stores to make up for its losses.In the Northern part of New Jersey, it closed 26 supermarkets without the vol-ume needed to cover expenses. It closed 50 more stores in Long Island. Profitsfrom 250 stores in Central Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Georgia,and South Carolina helped offset financial problems and stabilize stores inPhiladelphia, the pride-filled location of its corporate headquarters. Food Fairpurchased Penn Fruit, hoping to strengthen its local position (Knox 1978). Justtwo years later, however, Food Fair filed for bankruptcy. The company could nolonger pay its bills. Distributors stopped making deliveries. Philadelphia’s largestnon-financial corporation, the nation’s sixteenth-largest retailer, and theemployer of thirty thousand workers in Greater Philadelphia declined in networth from $140 million in 1974 to $25 million in 1979 (Eisen 1979).

Only half of Food Fair’s 88 Philadelphia outlets remained profitable. In itsbankruptcy reorganization, Food Fair could not effectively convert its currentdistribution infrastructure designed for a larger multi-state network into alower-volume model for its 44 remaining stores. Executives closed Philadelphiaoutlets and distribution centers. The company relocated its headquarters toFlorida, prioritizing growth in the less competitive region (“Suppliers DesertingFood Fair” 1978; Gillespie 1978; Eisen and Herman 1979; Eisen 1979; Gillespie1979).

Intra-Organizational TurmoilLarge national chains also fell behind, facing obsolescence in relation to thechanging distribution infrastructure. Many companies competed at the nationalscale over buying power to maximize sales volumes and at the local scale forhigher proportion of consumer dollars. This multi-scale approach forced regularadaptations and innovations (Goff 1978). Yet converting to higher sales vo-lumes created problems in urban settings. Square footage cost more than in thesuburbs. Building codes and the established built environment made renovationsand expansions difficult.

Following a multi-decade effort to convert its distribution infrastructure,A&P reduced its number of stores from a high of fifteen thousand to two thou-sand by 1980. A&P was the most prosperous innovator of urban grocery stores,but the supermarket system challenged its profit-making formula. In 1975, itclosed over a thousand stores, including 17 in the Philadelphia area and nine inthe city itself. Jonathan Scott, chairman and CEO, said in 1975, “There is nolonger any way we can support the burden of so many old stores. In recent yearswe have tried very hard against heavy odds to continue to serve local areas in


many cities and towns. Now we must move ahead to complete the transition westarted long ago” (Holland 1975a). As reported in the Courier Post, closingstores were “marginal facilities” and “considered obsolete” by “today’s stan-dards” (“A&P to Shut Down” 1974). A&P’s roots as an urban-based corpora-tion constrained its ability to adapt. Cornell agricultural economist WillardHunt said in 1979 that A&P “was too late moving to the suburbs. When thecompany did move, the competition already was there” (Gillespie 1979). Facingdecades of financial turmoil, A&P executives sold majority ownership to aGerman supermarket corporation (Gillespie 1979).

American Stores faced a similar scenario. Ida E. Brown of Philadelphia’sGermantown section owned nine hundred shares of company stock. At theannual shareholders’ meeting, she contested the closing of a store in her neigh-borhood. She said it caused “great inconvenience” to seniors, as the nearest re-maining supermarket was too far to walk. John R. Park, chairman andpresident, responded, “There is no quick and easy solution to problems createdfor the elderly and poor by the closing of city supermarkets. I wish I could prom-ise you a solution.” A spokesperson for American Stores said the fifteen-thousand-square-foot store in Germantown “wasn’t big enough to generate thevolume necessary to make a profit under Acme’s price-discounting policy set upthree years ago.” They planned to open 39 stores in the twenty-five- to thirty-thousand-square-foot range during the fiscal year and close an additional twentysmaller stores. Infrastructural interdependence compelled them to open largersupermarkets in areas with more secure sales volumes while closing less profit-able outlets (Newman 1975; Dalton 1975; Herman 1975).

Infrastructural Breakdown Becomes VisibleThe above example of the elderly woman from Germantown exemplifies a uniqueform of deprivation. The poor and elderly, those with limited mobility, facedhardships when urban interdependencies eroded. Areas once housing multiplemarkets were left with none, solidifying a period of consumer vulnerability. Forexample, a West Philadelphia neighborhood around Baltimore Avenue lost itsPantry Pride (Food Fair), Acme (American Stores Company), and Penn Fruit injust a couple of years. Only smaller, higher-priced stores remained. Convenience-store companies like 7–11 wanted to move into the neighborhood, but as BennieSwans, president of the Baltimore Avenue Business and Community Association,said in 1979, “What the residents need in this area is another supermarket wherethey can purchase items at discount rates” (Smith 1979).

When infrastructural breakdown becomes visible, consumers, activists, andpoliticians see it as a public problem without necessarily understanding its dee-per roots. The immediacy of vulnerability masks how sociotechnical interdepen-dencies create deeply entrenched problems. Public officials accused decliningcompanies of excluding poor neighborhoods. State Senator Freeman Hankins,representative of the Seventh District, discussed a Senate investigation into clos-ing supermarkets:


I have an interest in eliminating some basic problems that face my constitu-ents who find themselves without the services of food markets with com-petitive prices beneficial to them…The fact is that there is money in thoseplaces which people think are impoverished and negligible in terms ofincome potential, and that the state might be able to develop some plansto assure that people in West Philadelphia, Germantown and North Phillywill be respected for the profit business people can make dealing withthem. It is important that people cease having to walk a proverbial “mile”just for a loaf of bread. (“Hearings on Supermarket Closings” 1979)

Hankins pointed out that people in poor neighborhoods still spent money on food.Yet he missed the broader infrastructural context. Without public investment inequitable distribution, private firms sank costs into organizational and technicalinterdependence. New taken-for-granted organizational strategies became embed-ded into the distribution infrastructure. Following the period of market decline, ex-ecutives started to assume that urban market development was less viable.

Corporate mergers gained traction following this period of collapse. Decision-makers in centralized corporate headquarters were separated from local con-sumer markets. Executives determined volume, advertising, sourcing, pricing,and distribution, which reduced the autonomy of in-store managers. Competingin multiple states and developing new logistical technologies further compelledstandardized commodity lines and store layouts to maintain profitability.Infrastructural exclusion became a pervasive form of urban deprivation.

Discussion and ConclusionThe origins of the food desert represent a case of urban inequality as infrastruc-tural exclusion. By examining the reorganization of public and private infra-structures, this article peeled back the “connective tissues” between differentorganizational actors and different levels of analysis. This form of urban depri-vation was an outcome of recursive processes of building and expanding organi-zational and material interdependence (Molotch, Freudenberg, and Paulsen2000; also see Elliott and Frickel 2013). Infrastructure emerged as a semi-autonomous and path-dependent force that generated organizational mistakesand unanticipated consequences.

Focusing on the role of distribution infrastructure in producing urban inequal-ity has broad implications. It shows that exclusion is not necessarily an outcomeof political-economic power struggles, ideological regimes, strategic decisions todisadvantage certain groups, or larger companies dominating smaller ones.Infrastructural exclusion can occur through contingent, incremental, and rela-tional processes, mediating between the political economy of uneven territorialdevelopment and community experiences. Historical circumstances—the GreatDepression, changing population settlements, and transportation innovations—gave rise to competing organizational and technical adaptations in cities and sub-urbs alike. Piecing together private and public infrastructures into an interdepen-dent system involved organizational adjustments and fierce competition.


Companies made significant mistakes navigating the competitive path towardthe mass merchandising system of higher-volume stores, shrinking profit margins,and lower transaction costs. Situated market actors negotiated between innovatingto stand out from competitors, depending on existing organizational routines, andconforming to industry conventions. A&P—once the largest corporation in thenation—grew to prominence in the previous era as an urban grocery store, but itwas slow to adopt emerging conventions. In contrast, Food Fair heavily invested ininfrastructural innovations. It went too far beyond stabilizing conventions. FoodFair tried, albeit unprofitably, to combine multiple merchandising approaches intoone organizational format over a decade before Wal-Mart mastered it.

Infrastructural interdependence incrementally crystallized into a semi-autonomous force. When industry conventions become embedded into the dis-tribution system, they overwhelm corporate intent and strategy. Infrastructuralinterdependencies generated unanticipated consequences. Some companies wentcompletely out of business, unable to make the necessary adjustments. Othersfiled for bankruptcy and restructured corporate goals around new industry pri-orities. All four companies in this study closed down dozens of stores at a time,following a period of opening stores in urban neighborhoods and suburbs at thesame time. Reorganizing distribution networks gradually extended membershipto new groups and places, but in turn marginalized others (Star 1995).Infrastructure emerged as a reinforcing mechanism of race and class exclusion,leaving behind innocent bystanders.

Future research could benefit from further investigations of how public and pri-vate organizations inscribe routines into sociotechnical interdependencies with sub-stantial consequences for the public at large. Understanding the formation ofinfrastructural connections has further relevance in this age of privatizing publicgoods like water. Emerging public/private intersections may aim to achieve higher-quality and less expensive goods and services. However, the transformation offood distribution shows that such intersections can constrain equitable access.

Socio-historical investigations of this kind also face methodological limita-tions. Researchers are dependent on available historical materials that provideneither comprehensive listings of store openings and closings nor direct observa-tions of backstage executive decision-making. Instead, the links between levelsof analysis were made by studying executive discourses about changing organi-zational, material, and spatial conditions, archival documentation of samplestore openings and closings, and narrative accounts of significant corporatechanges and market declines resulting in batch closings. While this approachprovides insights into the origins of the food desert, important questions remainabout its persistence in many places.

Note1. Multiple subfields now conceptualize humans and technologies as hybrid actors.

Urbanists define infrastructure as “metabolic” and “lively”—it creates a new “metro-politan nature” that alters public health possibilities and community-level responses(Gandy 2002; Amin 2014). Moreover, economic sociologists examine capitalist goals


of efficiency and profit maximization, not only as economic strategies, but also astaken-for-granted routines accomplished through sociotechnical forms (Callon 1998;Muniesa, Millo, and Callon 2007; Pinch and Swedberg 2008). Infrastructural exclusionbuilds on these perspectives, historicizing the organizational process by which infra-structural interdependencies become the structuring mechanisms enforcing adjustments.

About the AuthorAndrew Deener is an associate professor of sociology at the University ofConnecticut. His research interests include urban development, neighborhoodchange, infrastructure, culture, and consumption. He is the author of Venice: AContested Bohemia in Los Angeles (University of Chicago Press), a historicaland ethnographic study of conflict and change in five adjacent neighborhoods.He is currently completing a book about the transforming relationship betweenurban infrastructure and the food system.

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