Abstract: This dissertation explores whether food retail inaccessibility has established itself in Flanders. To investigate this a mixed methods methodology is applied. First, a theorization on how inaccessibility can occur even in highly developed nations is provided, based on a comprehensive literature review. Historically retail has been embedded in residential structures. Monofunctional development patterns in Fordist and post-Fordist times, however, have led to a severe unbundling of living and shopping, resulting in an increased need for automobility. Those with reduced personal mobility rates due to socioeconomic or physical reasons are confronted with inaccessibility because of this spatial mismatch. Retail policy, however, has been shown to temper unbundling trends, particularly when it is embedded in spatial planning and applied on a national/federal level. In Flanders, policy was based on socioeconomic restrictions with the municipalities in the driver’s seat. Descriptive statistics then show important retail-residential unbundling trends in the region. The relationship between food retail floor space and the residential is further investigated using Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). Large supermarkets and hypermarkets have clearly sprawled away from residential structures, though the network of traditional, specialized retailers is still embedded. Big shops, however, increase consumer utility through lower prices and larger assortments. An address level network analysis shows that basic accessibility, or the ease of reaching a food opportunity with a full variety regardless of attractiveness, has been maintained in cities and in town centers through a network of both traditional stores and small supermarket formulas. Since poverty has sedimented in the urban core, basic inaccessibility due to socioeconomic reasons (i.e. food deserts) remained limited and highly contextualized in outer city modernist housing estates, garden cities and industrial areas. Said small food store network never ...