Planning Food and Place: Navigating Dollar Stores to Improve Healthy Food Access

Problem, research strategy, and findingsFood access persists as a public policy concern in the United States. In the past 20 years, a variety of public and private organizations and activists have taken different approaches to address it, with varying levels of success. In the meantime, a newer actor—the dollar store—has come on the scene, proliferating widely in both urban and rural areas, alarming advocates for improved healthy food access and others. We used the business literature to describe these stores and their business models, and we reviewed scholarly literature from the public health and community development fields that is critical of them, as well as literature that views these stores as an opportunity for communities. We reviewed the efforts of localities to date to control and limit dollar stores, as well as efforts to work with them via partnerships. We offer recommendations for how planners can navigate the challenges of dollar stores to improve food access and maintain community vitality.Takeaway for practiceThe growth of dollar stores has added complexity to the task of improving food access in low-income communities, especially in rural and small-town settings. By staying grounded in their core competency of land use planning and regulation, and using both traditional and new tools, planners can navigate the challenges of dollar stores to achieve vibrant places with healthy, fresh food.