An interesting story in the Washington Post highlights a very tangible downside to the rapacious gentrification and condopalooza overtaking the five boroughs: a form of food insecurity tied to geography, not income.

Alicia Rivera has no good supermarket within walking distance of her Brooklyn home. A leg injury keeps her from taking the bus, so every three weeks a friend picks her up and drives her to a different neighborhood to stock up on green peppers, milk, chicken wings, ground beef -- as much as she can fit in her kitchen to last until the next shopping trip. "It's hard," Rivera said as she unloaded her haul from the car into a cart. She buys mainly what she can freeze, and that means few fruits and vegetables. "I wish there was a good store close by," she added.

There's more.

Soaring real estate values are prompting property owners throughout the city to shutter grocery stores and sell to developers, according to city officials, supermarket owners and industry analysts. In the process, another of the essential services that make New York livable is pushed further away, replaced by glittering condos and more banks. Today there are one-third fewer supermarkets in New York's five boroughs than there were six years ago, said Lawrence Sarf, the president of F&D Reports, a retail consulting company.

As it becomes ever easier to acquire a triple-shot latte on every corner of the city, not to mention artisanal cheeses at one's local bodega, the banishment of supermarkets from the urban core adds another burden on the City's harried working class, further fraying neighborhoods already beset by rising economic inequality. Considering the well-established linkage between food insecurity and broader societal challenges - childhood obesity comes to mind - a loss of a third of community-oriented retail platforms is disturbing. There are policy tools available - a community food assessment, for example - to diagnose possible action items for policy-makers. The question is whether those steps will be taken as long as the real estate industry is flooding campaign coffers with cash. The Bloomberg administration, to its credit, is looking for creative ways to address this variant of food insecurity.

One project is the return of the greengrocer pushcart, an effective and low-cost way to get fresh produce in certain neighborhoods, Bloomberg said. The city plans to license 1,500 street vendors to sell fruits and vegetables in the city's poorest neighborhoods. Another program encourages bodegas to carry low-fat milk and to sell fruits and vegetables in single-serving bags. Officials are also planning to launch a statewide supermarket commission that will seek new ways to interest grocery stores in neighborhoods that need them.

Problem is, that really is tinkering at the margins. There's no substitute for broadly dispersed retail accessible to all New Yorkers physically and financially. Unless, of course, we want a City that is a luxury ghetto.