Multiply-Deserted Areas

What are multiply-deserted areas?

Multiply-deserted areas (MDAs) are neighborhoods that have a shortage of multiple social, economic, and health-related resources. The way that capitalism operates in society creates patterns of resource shortages in which communities are not “deserted” in an isolated manner (i.e., food deserts do not exist separately from healthcare deserts, etc. but are co-occurring in impoverished urban neighborhoods). Thus, framing resource-scarce, urban neighborhoods as multiply-deserted areas creates a multilayered, cumulative perspective of neighborhood deprivation.

What do race and class have to do with deserts and MDAs?

My research shows that predominantly Black neighborhoods are nearly three times as likely to be resource deserts. The odds of a neighborhood being a multiply-deserted area increases as median household income increases if the neighborhood is predominantly Black. Acknowledging the inherent racist and capitalist ideologies guiding the economic and historical processes that have both directly and indirectly situated certain groups in these racialized spaces implicates these spaces as sites of state-sanctioned violence and infrastructural exclusion.

Can living in an MDA affect my health?

Yes. My research shows that multiply-deserted areas (MDAs) have higher prevalence of asthma, diabetes, physical inactivity, and obesity compared to neighborhoods with low or no resource scarcity. This pattern is even more pronounced in MDAs that are predominantly Black.