The urban food system approach: thinking in spatialized systems

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on urban food systems as an approach for analyzing food as part of the city region by also considering the underlying spatial structures. Taking a systemic perspective, the paper identifies spatialized urban food system components and their linkages and interactions with the aim of fostering integrated and multidimensional intervention approaches for urbanizing regions. This paper contributes to an understanding of the relation between the urban system and the food system focusing on the spatial dimension of urban food systems. It illustrates geographies of urban food systems. The first part poses the questions: How is an urban food system described? How do the components relate and manifest? A systemic approach helps to describe connections between components with regard to related places, practices and actors: What are the drivers that transform food systems toward functioning systems that produce healthy food, provide income for (urban) farmers, accessibility to food for all income classes, and allows valorization of food waste. The second part expands on actual cases of urban food systems in the context of two research projects. Selected results of the transdisciplinary research project “Urban Agriculture Casablanca” (UAC) illustrate the contribution of urban agriculture to the urban food system in the urbanizing region of Greater Casablanca. The urban food system components are spatialized using the examples of Kigali (Rwanda) and Da Nang (Vietnam), case cities of the trans-sectoral research project “Rapid Planning” (RP). It perceives food systems as part of urban infrastructure including trans-sectoral synergies between resource flows within an urban metabolism.