Municipal policies aiming to improve equity in food access and health often rely on the assumption that neighborhoods with limited availability of healthy foods and high levels of diet-related illness should be the targets for change. However, food systems planners have used the 'local trap' to caution that there is nothing inherently beneficial about the local or any other scale of action with regard to improving the social justice, ecological sustainability, or public health outcomes of food systems. This study examines the local trap argument in the food policy contexts of New York and London. It asks: Are there comparable inequalities in food environments of New York and London? How do individuals living and working in the highest and lowest income areas of these cities perceive, navigate, and use the food environment? How does local, or neighborhood, food availability influence access to food and health? This study employed a cross-national, comparative, and mixed-method design. A total of 110 food establishments were observed in the study areas. The number and type of establishments in the study sites reflected the income of residents. The types of food available reflect the place-types present as well as the demography of local areas.

To gather narrative and spatial data about everyday experience and food events, space-time food diaries, mental mapping, and semi-structured interviews were collected from a total 40 participants. Space-time food diaries and mental maps were analyzed to determine the proportion of in- and out- of neighborhood food events. Individual participants operationalized neighborhood boundaries in their mental maps of the study sites. There was a variation across individuals with regard to the percentage of in-neighborhood food events they reported in the space-time food diaries.

Findings show that neighborhood food environments are meaningful determinants of diet for diverse eaters, but eaters' usages, perceptions, and identifications with the food environment operate across a range of geographic scales. They suggest that neighborhood social and economic integration may be a determinant of urban food environments. Thus, definitions of urban food policy should include those housing and community development policies that impact neighborhood social and economic diversity.