I had an interchange today with Zachary Neal, managing editor of the terrific journal, City and Community, and it reminded me of his fascinating paper on "Culinary deserts, gastronomic oases: A classification of US cities" published in January in Urban Studies.
The study looked at all sorts of restaurants from fast food joints, coffee shops and casual dining to ethnic restaurants, elite restaurants and "eatertainment" venues and more across some 245 cities.
His findings: cities cluster across two dimensions: some are "Urbane," while others are "McCulture." "Urbane oases" have a wide and diverse mix of restaurant types. Place like DC, LA, and San Fran, they correlate closely with locations of the creative class. "McCulture oases" are places where the chains outnumber the unique–Phoenix, Columbus, Houston and at least two well known creative centers, ahem…. Raleigh and Austin. These places Neal says are mainly "nerdistans."
Then there are places which either have a few ethnic restaurants or a few fast food joints. "Urbane deserts" are heavy on older, rebounding suburbs like Arlington, VA; Oakland CA; Bellvue, WA; and Naperville, IL. McCulture deserts (there are lots of them) include Detroit, Little Rock, Kansas City and many, many others. They are strong social capital communities in the main.
A PDF of the paper is here.
November 29th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Curiously two cities I often fault for thier mechanical blandness (Dallas and Calgary) offer some of the most consistently fantastic food I’ve ever had.
Yes both these cities are littered with nation branded chains, but both also have countless hidden gems (Toy’s in Dallas, and Jaquiline Suzanne’s in Calgary are real standouts). Innearly 6 years of living in Dallas I never had a disappointing meal.