Food in 19th-Century American Cities

Editor's Introduction: The Politics of Urban Reform in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 1870–1920

Cities and agriculture are fundamentally linked, yet often coevolve in a contradicting manner. On the one hand, many scholars in science and urban planning argue in favor of satisfying urban food demands through local and regional agricultural production. On the other hand, as the process of urbanization occurs, competition between agricultural and non-agricultural land use is intensifying, more often than not to the disadvantage of agriculture in urban and peri-urban areas. In order to be part of sustainable land use in an urbanizing society, studies suggest that agriculture needs to become increasingly multifunctional. However, the interplay of multifunctional agriculture (MFA), food supply systems, and urban areas is not fully understood and requires more attention. Against this background, this chapter explores the potential of MFA within short food supply chains in peri-urban areas. In particular, MFA is seen as a resource for strengthening urban agriculture and city region food systems as a sustainable development. Based on a local case study in Berlin (CSA SpeiseGut), this chapter examines innovative practices and strategies at farm level that foster multifunctionality in community-supported agriculture (CSA). The case study illustrates how multiple functions such as producing local food (production goal), delivering amenities for urban lifestyles (consumption goal), and protecting ecosystem benefits (protection goal) emerged and how they contribute to a city region food system. The chapter reveals that peri-urban farming can indeed become an integrative land-use option when developing synergies between MFA and short food supply chains. In particular, MFA can stimulate the creation of new food networks, which strengthen urban agriculture and city region food systems.

The urban food system addressed here centers on urban food processing, distribution and consumption (including food packaging and waste disposal) and as such addresses how food moves from processing and distribution centers to points of consumption and ultimately waste disposal within cities. The Food‐Energy‐Water Systems (FEWS) Nexus extends to and through urban boundaries. Energy and water resource use are vital along these routes and are interdependent with one another and with food processing in ways that differ from those in agricultural production systems outside urban boundaries. This paper addresses how the urban food system affects the intensity of energy and water resource use and how these interdependencies can be altered by abrupt changes or extreme events. The urban food system is significantly affected by resource disruptions such as power outages, water contamination or disruption due to droughts or distribution line breakages. The system must be able to be resilient to these changes to be sustainable. FEWS flows and usage concepts presented in this paper are based on system characteristics analogous to one of the largest food distribution centers in the U.S. and the largest city, the Hunts Point Distribution Center in New York City. The Center handles a large share of the perishable food supply, involves numerous utilities that support one another, and a wide range of products, and thus provides a framework for evaluating urban FEWS relationships. In addition to direct energy for refrigeration, lighting, heating and cooling, indirect energy resources consumed by transportation systems that deliver food to Hunts Point exemplify interdependencies. Network models are used to describe scenarios for the interrelationships in the urban food system, including changes in the mix of resources due to conservation and other resource decisions as well as disruption of those resources in an extreme event. Selected food consumption and production practices are also considered. The modeling framework provides a generalizable network model that captures extreme weather event effects and enables the quantitative static and resilience analysis and planning. The extreme weather event component uses both static and dynamic formulations for resilience to portray changes in network topology and network changes over time respectively. The nodes of the network capture urban FEWS resources and the linkages between the nodes capture network characteristics. The network models that correspond to different scenarios are integrated to understand the interdependencies from processing through resource consumption as a basis to identify the patterns of interdependencies that lead to cascading failures, pinpoint nodes and links that are the weakest components of the network, and support resilience planning for the disruptive events. The analysis and design of the network will inform the planning and recovery policies to enhance the resiliency of the FEW critical infrastructures of New York City and potentially transferrable to other large urban areas and prepare them for future anticipated and unanticipated extreme events. The modeling used for the scenarios is considered generalizable to other areas and scalable to urban food systems of different sizes and configurations. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 37: 122–131, 2018

In the context of growing urbanisation, urban poverty, and climate change impacts, the importance of urban food security and urban food systems is increasingly recognised by both local and national governments, as well as international actors. There is also a growing understanding that urban development and food systems cannot be decoupled from rural development given the multiple impacts that urban areas have on their surroundings. In recent years the concept of City Region Food Systems (CRFS) has emerged as a promising approach to support local governments, policy makers, and multi-stakeholder bodies in making informed decisions to improve urban and regional food system sustainability and resilience, while taking into account a more integrated approach to territorial development across urban and rural areas. This paper is based on an ongoing FAO and RUAF programme of assessing and planning City Region Food Systems, currently implemented in eight city regions in Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Senegal, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, and Zambia. The paper analyses the content, definition and delimitations of the concept of City Region Food Systems by presenting two case studies from Latin America (Quito and Medellín), and discusses first advances in policy uptake and territorial food planning.

America's medical schools have long used human cadavers to teach anatomy, but acquiring adequate numbers of bodies for dissection has always been a challenge. Physicians and medical students of the 18th and 19th centuries often resorted to robbing graves, and this history has been extensively examined. Less studied, however, is the history of body acquisition in the 20th century, and this article evaluates the factors that coalesced to transition American society from body theft to body donation. First, it describes the legislation that released the unclaimed bodies of those dying in public institutions to medical schools for dissection, thereby effectively ending grave robbery. Then it discusses midcentury journalistic exposés of excesses in the funeral industry-works that were instrumental in bringing alternatives, including the previously unpopular option of body donation, to public consciousness. Finally, it examines the rise of body transplantation, the Uniform Anatomical Gifts Act of 1968, and the subsequent state of willed-body programs at the turn of the 21st century. Body-donation programs have gradually stabilized since and currently provide most of the bodies used for dissection in American medical schools. Relying as they do on public trust, however, these programs remain potentially precarious and threatened by public scandals. Whether American medical schools will receive enough bodies to properly educate students in the future remains to be seen.

Food systems are vulnerable to the impacts of resource scarcity, climate change, and population growth, as well as the issues associated with unsustainable social, environmental and economic practices. These challenges have encouraged local food systems as an alternative to global supply chains. This thesis studies this trend at the urban level in order to explore issues and opportunities for change. It argues that urban food systems need to embrace both sustainability and resilience. A sustainable urban food system has an economy that serves social needs while safely operating within ecological limits. Resilience, on the other hand, includes the ability to recover from shocks such as extreme weather events, as well as the capacity to adapt and ultimately transform in response to the ongoing impacts of climate change. The main research question that this thesis investigates is “How can alternative food networks help to foster sustainable and resilient urban food systems considering climate change and increased urbanisation?” A comparative case study approach was used involving local initiatives in the Brisbane and greater Melbourne metropolitan regions (Australia). Both Australian urban areas have similar economic development; however, differences can be found in terms of institutional interest and the existence of food policies. The gathering of a diverse picture of alternative food networks was the strategy adopted for selecting the initiatives that participated in this research. The criteria that alternative food networks should attend were the existence of goals related to access to healthy food, fairer conditions for food workers, and reduction of environmental impacts. The thesis used multiple sources of data including primary (semi-structured interviews with founders or members of initiatives and field observation) and secondary data (publicly available documents such as annual reports). The findings of this research contribute to the conceptualisation and planning of sustainable and resilient urban food systems, as well as, to the knowledge on the role and limitations of alternative food networks in achieving this. The case study conducted in this thesis revealed how alternative food networks can contribute to the creation of food provision systems that are aligned with environmental sustainability and social justice. The thesis exposed the particularities of initiatives that, among other aspects, have minimal food loss and waste, supports agroecology, provides farmers with fair payment and makes organic food affordable. Alternative food networks demonstrated to have resilience building capacity, something that is not confined to its borders and can impact on the whole urban food system. Alternative food networks’ values travel and allow the replication and creation of new models, however, not in the pace necessary for a wider urban food system transformation. The main challenge exposed by this thesis for alternative food networks is the need for scaling up by influencing institutions and policies more broadly.

هدف اصلی مقالة پیش رو بررسی نحوة برساخت مرز و مرزگذاری فرهنگی و اجتماعی در سفرنامة ظهیرالدوله (همراه مظفرالدین‌شاه به فرنگ) است. این سفرنامه که در بحبوحة انقلاب مشروطه نگاشته شده، از لحاظ جایگاه اجتماعی- سیاسی نگارنده حائز اهمیتی ویژه است. بحث توسعه‌یافتگی و مدرنیزاسیون جامعة ایرانی، لاجرم در ارتباط با کشورهای غربی پیوندی تنگاتنگ داشته است. به‌طور تاریخی و حتی در دوران معاصر، همیشه این سؤال مطرح بوده است که چگونه می‌توانیم ضمن برقراری و حفظ رابطه با غرب، الگویی مطلوب برای توسعة جامعة ایرانی فراهم کنیم؟ این رابطه برای جامعة ایران با مسائل و پیچیدگی‌های فراوانی همراه بوده و از دورة قاجار تاکنون هیچ‌گاه از این پیچیدگی‌ها و تنش‌ها کاسته نشده است. با جستن ریشه‌های تاریخی و فرهنگی و پژوهش دربارة اساس شکل‌گیری این رابطه در بستری تاریخی می‌توان به درک همه‌جانبه‌تری از هویت درحال شکل‌گیری جامعة ایران دست یافت. همچنین تلاش بر این است که با تحلیل محتوای قسمت‌های منتخب سفرنامة مذکور، نخستین لحظه‌هایی که در آن انواع مرزهای اجتماعی و فرهنگی به شکل‌دهی مفهومی «هویت ایرانی» دامن زده‌اند، ثبت شود. به‌علاوه نشان داده شده است که چگونه در این قبیل سفرنامه‌ها محور توجه از پیشرفت کشورهای مقصد به نقص‌های جامعة ایران معطوف شده است و بیشتر از آنکه دیگری ستایش شود، خود ملامت و سرزنش می‌شود.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically challenged urban food systems, has hurt the resilience and fundamental function of urban food systems and also accelerated the trends of digitization and changing preferences of consumers in cities. This research conducted a qualitative analysis of the discourses, actions and interactions of different actors in the urban food systems in China during COVID-19 using an actor-oriented approach and discourse analysis. This research finds that stricter regulations and policies have been implemented by governments to regulate the food supply chain and ensure human health. Local community service personnel, volunteers, stakeholders along the food supply chain and consumers formulated collective actions during the pandemic yet chaos and discourse distortions also emerged at different stages. The pandemic is a preamble to changes in consumers’ preferences and food supply chains in urban communities. There were significant structural changes and a dual structure of urban and rural food systems, where unbalanced supply and demand existed. Collective actions with community governance and an innovative food business model to digitize flows and easily adapt to shocks in food systems are required.

Historians concerned with topics of urban, food, retail, and political history have long argued that ideals of political regulation decisively influence and shape urban food distribution systems in European and American cities. For example, researchers have been able to show that throughout the late 18th and mid-19th centuries, in cities like Paris, Mexico City, New York, and Manchester, surprisingly similar discussions were taking place about the regulation and liberalisation of bread and meat production, and their related distribution systems. The article engages with this international discussion by arguing that these debates represent a kind of “double movement” between regulated and self-regulated markets, as outlined by Karl Polanyi. It then raises the question of how urbanisation and political regulation affected the food supply system of the city of Vienna during the Vormärz period (1815–1847). By cartographically analysing the topographic development of bakers within and around the urban area, the article concludes that political-economic and demographic factors led to the creation of two distinctive, competing, and simultaneously complementary systems of bread supply during the first half of the 19th century.

Urban food systems consist of many stakeholders with different perspectives, different interests and different governance tools. This study aimed at developing potential future scenarios for the food system of Cologne by analysing the system with a Delphi approach. In our research-design, the suitability of the Delphi-method was evaluated not only as a tool for future modelling and scenario design, but also as a communication tool among the group of participants on a multi-stakeholder-platform. As a case study, the Food Policy Council of Cologne, Germany was used. Cologne can be seen as a forerunner among German cities in the development of a new urban food policy. Some of the successful steps to re-envisioning food as an urban system include joining the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, the decision of the City Council to become an edible city and the establishment of a Food Policy Council. For the study it was important to capture participants’ visions of a common goal regarding the governance of the urban food system and also to identify mental ‘silos’. It was obvious that the municipality of Cologne together with the Food Policy Council made great efforts towards participatory processes to build a vision for a sustainable and regional food supply. However, many stakeholder-groups in the process still work exclusively among themselves and do not actively practice the confrontation with the viewpoints of other relevant groups. This supports the maintenance of ‘silos’ and leaves little room for face-to-face discussions. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to explore key components of food provisioning in the future for Cologne while confronting all stakeholders (municipal administration and politicians, farmers and food activists) with the perspectives of all group members. We used a multi-stakeholder Delphi approach with 19 panellists to find out essential components of the municipal regional food provisioning system in Cologne. Unique in this Delphi study is the bringing together of municipal administration, regional urban farmers and food activists. The research is still on-going, but preliminary results show that more communication among all relevant actors, especially horizontally among different city departments, in the urban food system is needed.

Kenya is rapidly urbanising. In the growing cities and towns, there is an increasing need for food supplies, creating demand for agricultural products. High unemployment rates, urban poverty, and food and nutrition insecurity force some urban dwellers to partly adopt livelihood strategies based on urban agriculture. Presently in Kenya, urban and peri‐urban agriculture plays an important role in urban food system, because it enhances livelihood strategies for urban households, not least the poor. Using a sample of 2,009 households, this study characterised urban farming and urban‐based rural farming in medium‐sized towns of Thika and Kisumu, Kenya. It further assessed food security levels of urban households engaged in farming and households that do not farm. Results demonstrate that more than half of the households produced part of their food, either in urban or rural areas. About 37 per cent and 25 per cent of the respondents produced food in rural and urban areas, respectively. Generally, more of the households engaged in both urban farming and urban‐based rural agriculture are more food secure compared with the non‐farming households. Urban farming has a potential of improving household food security and provision of fungible income; hence, the practice should be included in the urban food policies.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, cities around the world have gone through terrible ordeals. These include a lack of urban resilience in emergency response, food supply, institutional cooperation, economic support, etc. Meanwhile, many urban and global problems have been amplified by the pandemic's impacts on food security issues, the long-term sustainability of food systems, and so on. In response to the recovery agenda of the post-COVID 19 era, rebuilding urban resilience and sustainability through the pathways of sustainable urban food system development has great potential. It is evident that food supports the fundamental needs of people's health and well-being, but cities account for most food consumption, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions. Starting from these considerations, this study investigates how urban agriculture can improve the sustainability and resilience of the urban food system through the analysis of the existing literature. Conducted on April 11, 2022, on the Web of Science database, this literature review includes bibliographic coupling, co-citation analysis, and co-occurrence analysis to map knowledge regarding the role of urban agriculture practices in fostering both urban food systems' 'sustainability' and 'resilience'. The findings of the study highlight different aspects that include more general considerations, e.g., urban agriculture alone cannot substitute large-scale food systems in the short term, but it could be a promising approach in the future, and more detailed aspects, such as the geographical recurrence of this kind of research and the most popular scientific journals addressing these topics.

Urban food systems are complex and increasingly recognised as not being sustainable, equitable or resilient. Though globalisation and lengthening of agrifood supply chains has brought many benefits, such as year-long availability of fresh produce and modernisation opportunities for some developing regions, they have increased reliance on food imports and reduced the food and nutrition resilience of many cities. This premise has been widely witnessed following recent financial, climatic and pandemic driven disruptions to food supplies. A greater understanding is thus needed of the lived reality of a modern city’s ability to sustainably and equitably feed itself in a crisis situation or otherwise. In a changing world, such knowledge is valuable on a variety of strategic planning levels. Employing publically available data, the scale of food security and resilience, and options for their improvement, are holistically assessed through a case study spatial analysis of the urban food system of the city of Leeds in the United Kingdom. The case study found that the Leeds city region is home to a significant and diverse food production and provision system, but it is not food secure in terms of providing sufficient energy or macronutrients, or functioning in an equitable manner for all of its residents. Options for improving the performance of the system, including urban farming and industrial symbiosis, were found to be nuanced and would only be effective alongside a range of complimentary interventions as well as high levels of investment, multi-sector cooperation and strong governance. Though food system evolution and development are grounded in local context, the methods, general findings and circular economy focussed recommendations emanating from the case study, are widely applicable.

Global food systems must be a part of strategies for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, optimal water use, and nitrogen pollution reduction. Insights from research in these areas can inform policies to build sustainable food systems yet limited work has been done to build understanding around whether or not sustainability efforts compete with supply chain resilience. This study explores the interplay between food supply resilience and environmental impacts in US cities, within the context of global food systems’ contributions to GHG emissions, water use, and nitrogen pollution. Utilizing county-level agricultural data, we assess the water use, GHG emissions, and nitrogen losses of urban food systems across the US, and juxtapose these against food supply resilience, represented by supply chain diversity. Our results highlight that supply chain resilience and sustainability can simultaneously exist and are not necessarily in competition with each other. We also found a significant per capita footprint in the environmental domains across Southern cities, specifically those along the Gulf Coast and southern Great Plains. Food supply chain resilience scores ranged from 0.18 to 0.69, with lower scores in the southwest and Great Plains, while northeastern and Midwestern regions demonstrated higher resilience. We found several cities with high supply chain resilience and moderate or low environmental impacts as well as areas with high impacts and low resilience. This study provides insights into potential trade-offs and opportunities for creating sustainable urban food systems in the US, underscoring the need for strategies that consider both resilience and environmental implications.

This article provides both a theoretical and empirical evidence on the role of urban agriculture (UA) to food and nutrition security as well as poverty reduction in urban areas, which have persisted as policy challenges in Africa. While countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa have taken agricultural interventions at the centre of addressing food and nutrition security in rural areas, UA does not feature well in urban food and poverty reduction policies in Tanzania. This creates policy gaps between the global, regional and national policies towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goal-2 of Zero hunger by 2030 and the African Union Agenda 2063 on food and nutrition. This study derives from the nexus of theories of urban sprawls and urban food systems which consider urbanisation and the associated demographic changes posing unprecedented challenges in terms of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. Based on a cross-sectional research design, the study employed a mixed-methods approach, collecting data through questionnaires, interviews, and a systematic review of the literature. A sample of 600 respondents was selected using purposive sampling from a target population of 6,000, consisting of adult male and female farmers, agri-food supply chain producers, food processors, input suppliers, distributors, and traders in urban and peri-urban areas of Tanzania. The study examined and confirmed the contribution of urban agriculture on food availability, accessibility, stability and utilization in urban households. A systematic literature review shows a multitude of benefits of urban agriculture on food availability, accessibility, nutrient utilization and stability. The examined literature shows potential of UA to overcome youth unemployment as they engage into urban agricultural activities and therefore contribute to income and poverty reduction. Findings provides an understanding of inadequate policy enabling environment for UA as n frameworks for increasing food security. However, UA is being practiced without legitimate policy and legal frameworks. The study recommends for institutionalization of UA as a pathway for attaining food and nutrition security and poverty reduction and therefore, calls for policy agenda setting to create space for UA in city policies and planning.