Metropolitan food systems in developing countries: The perspective of ?Urban Metabolism?

Abstract

The perspective of the paper is that of “urban metabolism” which views cities, metaphorically, as metabolic processes which take in people, food, resources, and energy, transform these into a distinctive quality of life, and emit people, products, and wastes. The paper focuses on urban food metabolism, by using the concept of the food system which includes the sub-systems of production, supply, distribution and consumption of food. The paper seeks to review the state of knowledge for each of these sub-systems, to provide examples that illustrate the functioning and determinants of urban food systems, to identify critical gaps in knowledge, to outline central research desiderata and to examine critically the analytic value of the concept of “urban food metabolism”.