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Primary Submission Category: Place/Communities
Where is food access in the recipe against gentrification? Policymaker and stakeholder perspectives from Seattle
Authors: Jane Dai, Barbara Baquero, Jessica Jones-Smith,
Presenting Author: Jane Dai*
Gentrification may create barriers to food access for legacy residents through food environment change and displacement. While research on gentrification and food access often focuses on quantifying neighborhood food environment change and describing individual experiences with those changes, less is known about how cities protect legacy residents’ food access in gentrifying neighborhoods. Seattle offers a compelling case study of this; a newly revised Food Action Plan and Comprehensive Plan both provide policy directions for equitable housing, transit, and food systems community development against gentrification. In July 2025, we conducted a cross-sectional study with key informant interviews (n=14) to gather policymaker and stakeholder perspectives on Seattle’s approach to mitigating gentrification. We used the focused Rapid Assessment Process to collect and analyze data across four domains of food sovereignty. Themes revealed how the city and community-based organizations (CBOs) planned against gentrification, mostly without food access in mind. In the Material domain, we found that food access was of material concern only for city departments directly involved with the Food Action Plan and for CBOs focused on food systems. In the Meaning domain, addressing gentrification meant addressing displacement of residents and businesses. In the Competence domain, city programs were well-received by CBOs if they prioritized capacity-building and centered legacy resident perspectives in new development initiatives. In the Future of Food domain, there was a collective vision for co-located access to food, housing, and transit—but affordable housing and equitable transit-oriented development were considered urgent policy targets. We attribute Seattle’s focus on non-food systems (housing, transit) because they may drive investment and economic growth during budget shortfalls. Our findings highlight a food access gap in policy approaches to address gentrification in Seattle.