Food Deserts in Washington DC

Finding Food Deserts in Washington DC

We define a food desert as any area that is outside a 0.5 radius of the nearest supermarket or greengrocer. Within Washington DC, we analyzed OpenStreetMap's shop data, finding 6 greengrocers and 71 supermarkets.

Washington DC itself covers an area of roughly 68 square miles. Of this, drawing a circle with radius of 0.5 miles around each shop, shops cover about 31 square miles, leaving 54% of DC as a food desert, about 37 miles in total.