Urban Agriculture in Urban Food Policies: Debate and Practices

Abstract

Urban food strategies aim at planning and developing more sustainable, just and resilient urban and city-region food systems, both with the implementation of institutionally driven strategic plans and with the engagement of food activists and actors of the food system. Urban productive landscape is often a key field of action of such policies, that often support and foster short food supply chains and environmentally and socially sustainable urban agriculture. This contribution explores the role of landscape and urban agriculture in the debate about urban food planning and in the practice of a number of existing urban food strategies, mostly in European and Northern American cities. The core idea is that productive landscape can represent at the same time a field for actions aiming at developing a more sustainable urban food system and a useful conceptual framework for the involvement of the actors of the food system in its co-production and co-management.