Supply gaps or food deserts in Germany: grocery retailing on the periphery

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More and more frequently so called neighbourhood shopping (grocery retailing) unveils supply gaps or even food deserts. This development can be especially observed in rural areas which have even lost a tremendous part of their retailing infrastructure over the last years because of demographic change. Normally supermarkets, discount stores and village shops are identified as solutions against this thinning out process which only serve traditional planning and policy principles and profit-orientated perspectives of the real estate industry, developers, retail suppliers and municipalities. Neither do these agents challenge the traditional understanding of local supply, nor do they ask if this concept of local supply produces (new) losers and who they are. The food desert concept origi-nally from GB and the USA which is more or less unknown in Germany wants to give answers on these questions. This concept will be transferred onto a comprehensive and systematic analysis for the German province of Schleswig-Holstein so that alternatives for grocery retailing beyond the well-known supermarket and discount worlds can be tested.