Urban Food Planning Research Articles

Urban food planning and management in Melbourne: current challenges and practical insights

ABSTRACT Over the last decades, local governments have begun to develop urban food planning instruments focused on improving public health and environmental sustainability, but shortcomings still exist. This paper builds on the case of the Melbourne Metropolitan Region (Australia) to elaborate on how urban food planning and management can address the challenges exposed by a systemic approach. Challenges include strengthening local food economies, developing a nexus between the urban environment, public health, and sustainability, and the circular management of food production resources. Our study contributes to urban food planning and management practice by identifying how policy instruments have successfully addressed these key challenges, and existing inconsistencies between policies and planning. Furthermore, policies should go beyond incentives for urban gardens and explore new areas of intervention, including integrating local producers and retailers into urban food planning, prioritizing fresh food commercialization over ultra-processed products, and integrating composting into waste management.

Rositsa T. Ilieva, 2016, Urban Food Planning: Seeds of Transition in the Global North

Rositsa T. Ilieva, 2016, Urban Food Planning: Seeds of Transition in the Global North

Review: Urban Food Planning: Seeds of Transition in the Global North by Rositsa T. Ilieva

Review: <i>Urban Food Planning: Seeds of Transition in the Global North</i> by Rositsa T. Ilieva

Exploring the Staple Foodscape of Dar es Salaam

The city region foodscape is a relational space of spatially proximate as well as more distant relations. The current understanding of city region foodscapes will be enhanced by more analyses of what is happening in the African and Asian cities where rapid population growth and urbanization, with all its challenges and opportunities, is predominantly taking place. This paper explores the city foodscape of one such city, the rapidly growing Dar es Salaam with over 4.5 million inhabitants. By following some important foods for eaters in the city, this paper draws a picture of the changing shape and nature of Dar es Salaam’s foodscape and draws out lessons for debates on city region food systems and urban food planning. It is found that key staple foods are coming from the rural hinterland through a food system that is not part of or modeled on the globally dominant corporate food system and as such represents a working alternative. This food system neither fits within administrative boundaries nor relies primarily on local production. We argue that more academic and policy attention needs to be given to understanding and reinforcing such middle-ground, neither local nor global, food systems that are delivering at city feeding scale.

Urban food planning in Italian cities: a comparative analysis of the cases of Milan and Turin

ABSTRACTThis contribution explores the issue of urban food planning in the Italian context in a comparative perspective, basing on the case studies of Turin and Milan, the two main cities of Northern Italy, currently engaged in processes of urban food policies development. The first part of the article outlines the general structure of these tools and describes their role of new political spaces for a public debate about food policies. The second section comparatively analyses the two case studies stressing their differences and similarities. Finally, the conclusion of the article focuses on the importance of identifying the right scales for analyzing and planning food systems.

Aquaponics in Urban Agriculture: Social Acceptance and Urban Food Planning

Aquaponics is emerging as a novel technology with particular potential for urban agriculture (UA). The social acceptance of aquaponics and its place in urban food planning has not previously been studied. This study used focus groups, key informant interviews, and scenario analyses to investigate the reactions of Adelaide’s urban food opinion leaders and local government area (LGA) officials to aquaponics. Most of the focus group participants were unfamiliar with aquaponics. The perceived negatives of the technology received greater attention than the perceived benefits. Aquaponics was thought to be most competitive in either niche or wholesale markets, with a need for scaled guidelines from backyard to large-scale commercial production. For aquaponics in urban settings the influence of urban planning and policy is an important, but to date unstudied, consideration. The urban growers’ opinions of the overcomplicated nature of urban food planning corresponded with the mixed policy responses of the LGAs towards UA. This further supports the participants’ desire for a supportive State Government stance on UA to encourage consistency in LGAs.

Contributing to food security in urban areas: differences between urban agriculture and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North

Food security is becoming an increasingly relevant topic in the Global North, especially in urban areas. Because such areas do not always have good access to nutritionally adequate food, the question of how to supply them is an urgent priority in order to maintain a healthy population. Urban and peri-urban agriculture, as sources of local fresh food, could play an important role. Whereas some scholars do not differentiate between peri-urban and urban agriculture, seeing them as a single entity, our hypothesis is that they are distinct, and that this has important consequences for food security and other issues. This has knock-on effects for food system planning and has not yet been appropriately analysed. The objectives of this study are to provide a systematic understanding of urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North, showing their similarities and differences, and to analyse their impact on urban food security. To this end, an extensive literature review was conducted, resulting in the identification and comparison of their spatial, ecological and socio-economic characteristics. The findings are discussed in terms of their impact on food security in relation to the four levels of the food system: food production, processing, distribution and consumption. The results show that urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North indeed differ in most of their characteristics and consequently also in their ability to meet the food needs of urban inhabitants. While urban agriculture still meets food needs mainly at the household level, peri-urban agriculture can provide larger quantities and has broader distribution pathways, giving it a separate status in terms of food security. Nevertheless, both possess (unused) potential, making them valuable for urban food planning, and both face similar threats regarding urbanisation pressures, necessitating adequate planning measures.

The Politics of the Public Plate: School Food and Sustainability

The main themes I want to address in this speech are the following: first, I start with where we began 14 years ago looking at the public plate with respect to school food, and I end up looking at cities because this is the transition that I personally did. I started with school food provisioning and ended up with urban food planning (Morgan, 2009). During this period the school food agenda has moved on and expanded, and it is now connecting with an exciting array of topics to do with urban food politics, policy and sustainability in the food system. This is what I feel is unique about food: its multifunctional capacity to link up with an array of other important issues. Clearly hunger and malnutrition are key topics in food studies around the world, but we can never reduce food studies to nutrition or, for that matter, economics. Second, I will address some of the barriers to creative public food procurement. Third, the compelling work of some school food pioneers over the last 14 years will be examined and, finally, I will show some examples of what civil-society groups are doing in several cities with pioneering municipalities, trying to promote sustainability through their food procurement policy.

Economic Crisis as a Catalyst for Food Planning in Athens

In the light of the current Eurozone crisis, an increasing number of Athenians from all walks of life are forced to cut spending on staple goods, such as food. Food poverty in the context of a European metropolis is the result of inadequate households' income, as well as limited choices of sourcing food in the city due to food retail sector consolidation. Corporate retailers have been criticized for greed and unethical pricing practices. The current crisis can be seen as a catalyst for change, a turning point of the homogenized food geography of Athens. Food poverty is one of the most remarked signs of the urban crisis. The time has come for the Athens Municipality to assume a leading role in urban food planning and formulate a Food Policy Plan for the city.