A team of researchers in Florida State University’s Department of Geography and the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering authored “Understanding Changes in Spatial Accessibility to Restaurants During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Disentangling Closures, Inequity, Neighborhood, and Transportation Mode” published in the journal Geographical Analysis. Lead author Kyusik Kim, Ph.D., a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Geography, co-authored this article with Mark W. Horner, Ph.D., Professor of Geography at Florida State University; Md. Shaharier Alam, former FSU Geography Master’s student and current Ph.D. student and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Florida; Onur Shalisan, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Researcher at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering; Mahyar Ghorbanzadeh, Ph.D., Transportation Engineer with HNTB; and Eren Erman Ozguven, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. The following summary was written by Jyana O’Donnell (B.A. Editing, Writing, Media ‘26).
Researchers from FSU’s Department of Geography and the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering published “Understanding Changes in Spatial Accessibility to Restaurants During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Disentangling Closures, Inequity, Neighborhood, and Transportation Mode” in the journal Geographical Analysis, which examines how restaurant closures during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted communities.

The authors compared the number of restaurants accessible within a specified travel time before the pandemic (2019) and during the pandemic (2021). They found that the spatial patterns of restaurant closures correlated with transportation modes: restaurants that were accessible by walking were impacted more in urban areas and restaurants that had mostly driving customers were affected more in suburban areas by the pandemic.
Lead author and Postdoctoral Researcher with FSU’s Department of Geography Kyusik Kim, Ph.D., shared that the research can be used to examine how to identify the most affected areas and reduce impacts to communities.
“Bigger picture, this research informs discussion of mitigating both social and economic shocks induced by restaurant closures in cities,” Dr. Kim said. “This has implications for vulnerable communities. This research can assist in identifying places that have experienced significant changes.”
Restaurants are not just places to eat, but social hubs and places of employment. When restaurants close, the social and economic opportunities in a community are diminished, and it can cause job losses and reduced neighborhood vibrancy.
To examine these effects, the researchers used spatial accessibility measures to assess the number of restaurants. They took a given location and calculated how many restaurants could be visited in a fixed amount of time (considering available means of transportation). The authors compared these figures in 2019 and 2021 and determined which communities faced significant losses of restaurants. They analyzed these affected communities based on socioeconomic and geographic characteristics.
Dr. Kim believes he and his co-authors’ findings could interest future researchers in assessing closure patterns in restaurants based on restaurant categorization, such as high-end dining, casual dining, and fast-food establishments, and how restaurant closures impact vulnerable communities.
To learn more about the Department of Geography, click here. For more information about the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, click here.

APA Citation:
Kim, K., Horner, M. W., Alam, M. S., Alisan, O., Ghorbanzadeh, M., & Ozguven, E. E. (2023). Understanding Changes in Spatial Accessibility to Restaurants During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Disentangling Closures, Inequity, Neighborhood, and Transportation Mode. Geographical Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1111/gean.12378.