Validating the City Region Food System Approach: Enacting Inclusive, Transformational City Region Food Systems

This paper utilises the ‘sustainable innovation journeys’ concept to trace how people organise and design urban food initiatives and influence city-region food policy. We evaluate whether designs succeed or fail and monitor the exchange of ideas that takes place between stakeholders. Tracing these interactions reveals the transformative potential of innovative projects, particularly if the food system changes they bring to the fore are aligned with policy interests. Three case studies provide on-the-ground insights to assess how small and medium-sized enterprises at the micro-level induce sustainability shifts. The case studies are businesses in the city-regions of Rotterdam, The Netherlands (urban farm and circular food economy); Vigo, Spain (food, forest and multi-functional land use); and Zurich, Switzerland (organic food and short supply chains). Each initiative was studied in-depth over a two-year period, with follow-up analysis for a further four years to monitor change over time (2013–2018). The cases promote the adoption of micro-level innovation practices: locally designed transition pathways that bring the benefits of change to the city-region (i.e. from the micro-level initiative to meso-level policy). The analysis highlights the importance of ‘soft change’. This can be something as simple as visiting an inspiring urban food initiative and meeting with stakeholders to generate mutual understanding, from where interests align to influence food chain practices and policy. Soft changes act as ‘seeds of transition’ for a shift towards more sustainable urban food systems, but we observe too potentially negative impacts due to lack of alignment at the micro- (initiative) or meso- (city-region) levels.

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Towards Territorially Embedded, Equitable and Resilient Food Systems? Insights from Grassroots Responses to COVID-19 in Italy and the City Region of Rome

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13052425 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (5) ◽

pp. 2425

Author(s):

Simona Zollet ◽

Luca Colombo ◽

Paola De De Meo ◽

Davide Marino ◽

Steven R. McGreevy ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Food Systems ◽

Food System ◽

Food Sovereignty ◽

Alternative Food Networks ◽

Small Scale ◽

System Transformation ◽

City Region ◽

The Face ◽

Negative Impacts ◽

The City

The negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have further exposed and exacerbated the structural weaknesses and inequalities embedded in the global industrial agri-food system. While the mainstream narrative continues to emphasise the importance of ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of global supply chains to counter COVID-related disruptions, the pandemic has also highlighted the resilience of small-scale, sustainable family farming and of spatially and socially embedded food systems. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of three surveys, this study examines organic and agroecological farmers’ responses to the first COVID-related lockdown (March–May 2020) in Italy, as well as the responses of grassroots alternative food networks (AFN) in the city region of Rome. The results show how local grassroots action played a significant role in ensuring food access, provisioning, and distribution, often in the face of delayed or insufficient action of mainstream food system actors and institutions. These grassroots responses identify opportunities and barriers for agri-food system transformation away from neoliberal, market-based interventions and towards policies that support food sovereignty and democracy in the context of localised, agroecology-based and more resilient agri-food systems.

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City-Region Food Systems and Second Tier Cities: From Garden Cities to Garden Regions

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12062532 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (6) ◽

pp. 2532

Author(s):

Koen van der Gaast ◽

Eveline van Leeuwen ◽

Sigrid Wertheim-Heck

Keyword(s):

Rural Areas ◽

Food Systems ◽

Food System ◽

Urban System ◽

Theory And Practice ◽

City Region ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Garden Cities ◽

Contextual Elements ◽

Second Tier

Theory and practice show that second-tier cities can play an important role in linking the urban and the rural. Second-tier cities are the middle ground of the urban system. The smaller spatial scale of second-tier cities, and their often-stronger connections with the rural hinterland can potentially enable a more sustainable food system. In this paper, we argue that the extent to which the benefits ascribed to the re-localisation of food can be achieved greatly depends on the contextual specifics of the second-tier city and the region in which it is embedded. Furthermore, we argue that to reach resilient, healthy and environmentally friendly city region food systems, three contextual elements need to be considered in their mutual coherence: (1) the historical development of the second-tier city and the region; (2) the proximity of food production to the second-tier city; (3) the scale and reach of the city region’s food system. We use the case-study of the Dutch city Almere to show how (a controlled) growth of cities can be combined with maintaining (or even increasing) the strength of adjacent rural areas. Such cities can play a role in creating Garden Regions: regions that foster healthy, sustainable and resilient food systems and that do not just connect urban and rural regions, but also connect city region food systems to national and global markets.

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Urban Food Strategy in the Making: Context, Conventions and Contestations

Agriculture ◽

10.3390/agriculture11020177 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 177

Author(s):

Mattia Andreola ◽

Angelica Pianegonda ◽

Sara Favargiotti ◽

Francesca Forno

Keyword(s):

Food Systems ◽

Food System ◽

Food Policy ◽

System Failures ◽

Direct Observations ◽

Food Policy Councils ◽

Political Economic ◽

The City ◽

Depth Interviews

Contemporary food systems face several paradoxes regarding equity and sustainability. Considering food production—an issue that simultaneously affects both the supply (production) and demand (consumption) sides—several cities have begun to implement new strategies, called Urban Food Policies. These approaches aim to address the various challenges presented by food system failures, while also involving the existing network of grassroot initiatives. For this reason, these have established Food Policy Councils, arenas where institutions can engage with supply chain actors and food activists, deciding through the processes of participatory democracy their Urban Food Strategies. This article investigates the evolution of a new Urban Food Strategy in a middle-sized Italian town, Trento. Despite a growing number of case studies discussing the promises and problematic aspects of UFS, empirical research and analysis tend to overlook the role of the context in which these processes are embedded and how the system of political, economic, cultural, and environmental opportunities weigh upon the success of these policies. The paper draws upon a multi-method qualitative approach combining in-depth interviews, document analysis, and direct observations of the construction process of an Urban Food Strategy for the city of Trento.

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"Grow what you eat, eat what you grow": urban agriculture as middle class intervention in India

Journal of Political Ecology ◽

10.2458/v25i1.22970 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 221 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Camille Frazier

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Urban Agriculture ◽

Food Systems ◽

Fruits And Vegetables ◽

Agricultural Land ◽

Food System ◽

Farming Community ◽

Urban Gardening ◽

Food Quality And Safety ◽

The City

In Bengaluru, India's "IT Capital" and one of its fastest growing cities, an increasing number of middle class residents are growing fruits and vegetables in their private spaces for home consumption. This article examines the motivations and practices of Bengaluru's organic terrace gardeners ("OTGians") in order to understand the possibilities and limitations of urban gardening as a middle class intervention into unsafe food systems and decaying urban ecologies. OTGians are driven primarily by concerns about worsening food quality and safety, and secondarily by the desire to create green spaces that counteract environmental degradation in the city. Like community gardeners in the Global North, they understand urban gardening as a way to mediate problems in the contemporary food system and the urban ecology. However, like other alternative food and environmental movements, OTGians' efforts are anchored in class-specific concerns and experiences. While they have been successful in creating a vibrant community, their efforts remain limited to the middle class. This is in large part due to the site, scale, and production practices that anchor their interventions. I briefly consider a different approach to food production in Bengaluru—that of a caste-specific farming community that has been dispossessed of much of its agricultural land in the name of urban development—to illuminate divergent histories, narratives, and practices of urban agriculture. However, I also emphasize the sites of intersection between these narratives, and suggest that OTGians can find commonalities with other food producers in the city in ways that might revolutionize Bengaluru's food future. I thus look for potential sites of collaboration and intersection in understanding the uneven power relations and politics of urban socio-natures.

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Pathways to Scaling Agroecology in the City Region: Scaling out, Scaling up and Scaling deep through Community-Led Trade

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12197842 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (19) ◽

pp. 7842

Author(s):

Poppy Nicol

Keyword(s):

Communities Of Practice ◽

Transformative Learning ◽

Food Systems ◽

Good Practice ◽

Knowledge Exchange ◽

Scaling Up ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

City Region ◽

The City ◽

Scaling Out

Scaling agroecology has the potential to support more sustainable and just food futures. This article investigates a case of community-led trade operating in the city region of London. Drawing upon interviews with stakeholders and practice-based ethnographic fieldwork, challenges and opportunities for agroecology are examined. Three dimensions of scaling agroecology are identified as pathways to sustainable and just food futures in the city region: scaling out, scaling up and scaling deep. Findings suggest scaling out agroecology requires access to secure, affordable land and infrastructure for agroecological communities of practice, alongside investment in capacity building for agroecological communities of practice via learning platforms (such as training programmes) and knowledge exchange (such as farmer-to-farmer and trader-to-trader learning). Second, scaling up agroecology requires transformations in policy, planning and legislation that value and invest in agroecological practices and divest in unsustainable and unjust food systems, supported via translocal networks for exchange of good practice. Third, scaling deep agroecology requires investment both in transformative learning opportunities and networks that support agroecological communities of practices, including those with lived experience of food injustice. Findings have implications for the question regarding scaling agroecology in the city region.

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SOCIOTECHNICAL INNOVATIONS OF SHORT FOOD SYSTEMS CASE STUDY OF THE CITY REGION ILE DE FRANCE

Proceedings of the Design Society: DESIGN Conference ◽

10.1017/dsd.2020.338 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

pp. 2149-2156

Author(s):

H. Serhan ◽

G. Yannou-LeBris

Keyword(s):

Sustainable Development ◽

Case Studies ◽

Food Systems ◽

Growth Strategies ◽

City Region ◽

Production Distribution ◽

Regional Sustainable Development ◽

Ecological Transition ◽

The City

AbstractThis paper relies on four case studies designed as short food systems aimed at coupling production, distribution, and consumption to contribute to the ecological transition of the City-Region Île-de-France. Through documentary research and interviews, we explore the growth strategies and sociotechnical innovations these short food systems implemented, and the links that can be established between these innovations, localism strategies, and the regional sustainable development.

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Foodshed, Agricultural Diversification and Self-Sufficiency Assessment: Beyond the Isotropic Circle Foodshed—A Case Study from Avignon (France)

Agriculture ◽

10.3390/agriculture11020143 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 143

Author(s):

José Luis Vicente-Vicente ◽

Esther Sanz-Sanz ◽

Claude Napoléone ◽

Michel Moulery ◽

Annette Piorr

Keyword(s):

Supply Chains ◽

Food Systems ◽

Spatial Configuration ◽

City Region ◽

Commodity Group ◽

Animal Products ◽

Cropping Patterns ◽

Local Agriculture ◽

Self Sufficiency ◽

The City

The regionalization of food systems in order to shorten supply chains and develop local agriculture to feed city regions presents particular challenges for food planning and policy. The existing foodshed approaches enable one to assess the theoretical capacity of the food self-sufficiency of a specific region, but they struggle to consider the diversity of existing crops in a way that could be usable to inform decisions and support urban food strategies. Most studies are based on the definition of the area required to meet local consumption, obtaining a map represented as an isotropic circle around the city, without considering the site-specific pedoclimatic, geographical, and socioeconomic conditions which are essential for the development of local food supply chains. In this study, we propose a first stage to fill this gap by combining the Metropolitan Foodshed and Self-sufficiency Scenario model, which already considers regional yields and specific land use covers, with spatially-explicit data on the cropping patterns, soil and topography. We use the available Europe-wide data and apply the methodology in the city region of Avignon (France), initially considering a foodshed with a radius of 30 km. Our results show that even though a theoretically-high potential self-sufficiency could be achieved for all of the food commodities consumed (>80%), when the specific pedological conditions of the area are considered, this could be suitable only for domestic plant-based products, whereas an expansion of the initial foodshed to a radius of 100 km was required for animal products to provide >70% self-sufficiency. We conclude that it is necessary to shift the analysis from the size assessment to the commodity-group–specific spatial configuration of the foodshed based on biophysical and socioeconomic features, and discuss avenues for further research to enable the development of a foodshed assessment as a complex of complementary pieces, i.e., the ‘foodshed archipelago’.

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City Region Food Systems: Building Resilience to COVID-19 and Other Shocks

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13031325 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 1325

Author(s):

Alison Blay-Palmer ◽

Guido Santini ◽

Jess Halliday ◽

Roman Malec ◽

Joy Carey ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Food Systems ◽

Ad Hoc ◽

Food System ◽

City Region ◽

Food And Agriculture ◽

Food And Agriculture Organization ◽

Entry Points ◽

System Sustainability ◽

United Nations Food

Using examples from the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper reviews the contribution a City Region Food Systems (CRFS) approach makes to regional sustainability and resilience for existing and future shocks including climate change. We include both explicit interventions under United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO-RUAF) led initiatives, as well as ad hoc efforts that engage with elements of the CRFS approach. To provide context, we begin with a literature review of the CRFS approach followed by an overview of the global food crisis, where we outline many of the challenges inherent to the industrial capital driven food system. Next, we elaborate three key entry points for the CRFS approach—multistakeholder engagement across urban rural spaces; the infrastructure needed to support more robust CRFS; system centered planning, and, the role of policy in enabling (or thwarting) food system sustainability. The pandemic raises questions and provides insights about how to foster more resilient food systems, and provides lessons for the future for the City Region Food System approach in the context of others shocks including climate change.

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Mapping the production-consumption gap of an urban food system: an empirical case study of food security and resilience

Food Security ◽

10.1007/s12571-021-01142-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Paul D. Jensen ◽

Caroline Orfila

Keyword(s):

Food Security ◽

Food Systems ◽

Food System ◽

Local Context ◽

City Region ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Urban Food System ◽

Sufficient Energy ◽

Food Imports

AbstractUrban 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.

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