Our project aims to examine the accessibility, both physical and socio economic, of food in the downtown eastside. We show the presence of different food providers (e.g. convenience stores, grocery stores, farmer’s markets, meal services) and food-related initiatives (e.g. community gardens) in and around the downtown eastside. The purpose of our analysis is to assess the accessibility that the community of the downtown eastside has to different food services. As well, we hope to analyze how the City of Vancouver and other social services have created resources for this marginalized community to access nutritious and affordable food.
In our team, we did not have a formal organization of who was doing what. Instead, when something needed to be done, one person would volunteer to do it. When we came to a crossroads in our analysis, and we were unsure what to do next, our team would brainstorm ideas and come to a decision together. Overall, we played into our individual strengths, and worked together to learn from each other’s strengths.
The most important skill I learned from this project was how to geocode. Since we took a lot of our data from sources like Yellow Pages, we often only had information on addresses and made our own spreadsheets. To display this data on our map, I learned how to geocode and the process of displaying XY data, including the importance of being aware of the map projection when displaying the data and changing it to align with the rest of the data. In terms of the analysis, I was surprised to discover how many food services are actually offered in the DTES. I was expecting for it to be almost a food desert and our analysis would conclude that more food assets should exist in the area. After doing this analysis, I am curious about whether all these food providers are enough for all the residents in that area, especially the affordable food services like community gardens or meal services.