paving over huge areas of the earth with concrete and forgetting how to grow your own food creates bad situations.
every community/neighborhood should by law have a green/garden area of a certain size that is capable of growing most of the food required to sustain the local residents.
That's not at all feasible for places with long, cold winters, or southwest areas without enough water, among others.
And before you say "well people shouldn't live there then", they live in those places because of the other resources. For example, let's say logging in Montana, or oil fields in Texas. You're not going to get the world to stop needing those resources any time soon.
They always had some kind of food importation. Unless you want to go all the way back to the first few people in the area who did subsistence hunting and gathering. But that's also not feasible for more than a few people.
and yet people in all of those places manage to grow their own food. humans are a resilient and adaptable species. but anyway, this is a tangent. even if the land has a playground on it, it doesn't matter. people can decide how to use a blank space in a neighborhood. if food grows well there, then grow food. if not, make it a farmers market and people can bring the food there. the point is....we shouldn't pave over the earth and then complain about food deserts.
if not, make it a farmers market and people can bring the food there.
The suggestion is that this is essentially what is happening. The exact real estate that these buildings will occupy are not likely to be greatly fertile lands. They might not be farmers markets, but it's the same point you're making here.