Grocery‑Zoning Chokeholds

Zoning maps and discretionary permit regimes (e.g., forbidding >10,000 sq ft groceries in many 'M' districts) act as structural chokeholds that keep large, efficient grocers out of dense, lower‑income neighborhoods, raising local retail prices and forcing consumers to pay transport or delivery premiums. Lowering those legal barriers is a direct, tractable urban policy lever to improve food access and reduce price dispersion across city borders. — Treating grocery zoning as an infrastructure‑level problem reframes food‑price politics from supply‑chain explanations to municipal land‑use governance with immediate distributive consequences.