DDRIG: Platformization of Urban Food Systems.

This project investigates how platform technology is changing the urban food system and our relationship to food. Using an interdisciplinary approach based on science and technology studies, food studies, and urban geography, this research will improve the urban food system by revealing how people think about the future of food, how platform technologies are reshaping both food access and people’s food practices, and how platforms affect food insecurity. Results will be distributed to directly benefit local food system administrators, legislators and planners focused on addressing food insecurity. Research findings and lessons will also be of more general use for federal food, health and wellness programs, and for state agencies developing food access and nutrition policy. The project broadly asks: how do food platforms shape the ways people think about and access food, how do they reorganize both the urban food system and individual food practices, and how does platform technology influence the structural conditions that cause hunger? The project hypothesizes that platform technology produces contested food imaginaries, directs the flow of food in ways that privilege chain retail, changes what and when people eat, and increases food insecurity by increasing access to convenience food in low-income areas. The intellectual merit of the project centers on how platforms both shape, and in some cases deepen, social inequality and food injustice. The novel methodology expands how platforms are analyzed in relation to food, domestic spaces and everyday forms of social reproduction. It also develops and tests new research techniques by using platform technology to conduct digital surveys, interviews, media content analyses, geospatial mapping, and ethnographic investigations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.