Gentrification the urban phenomenon in which local people are priced out of their neighbourhood. In a policy brief published in 2018, Nevin Cohen, from CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute in New York, usefully reminds us that food policy can play a role in this process.
Rediscovering urban food trees
Our cities host a great number of fruit and nuts trees, with potentially interesting implications for food security. Somehow, however, they fell off the radar of both local authorities and urban food advocates. A good reason to keep investigating and to learn from the few cities that have rediscovered urban food trees.
Growing strategic capacity in the food movement
What motivates alternative food movement practitioners and leaders? How do they manage limited capacity for action? Are groups collaborating with each other to build collective strength?
How can foresight be used in local food policies?
How can we anticipate the future of agriculture in our communities? And what can we do to make the future we want happen? Let's follow 3 French cities' foresight exercise to learn more.
Stronger together? Taking stock on city networks
What can city networks achieve? The experience of climate change networks provides useful insights for food ones.
Can urban waste become a resource for urban food production?
If urban farming has to be scaled up, how can this be done in the most resource-friendly way? Researchers have reviewed key urban waste streams and the way they can contribute to urban agriculture.
The A to Z of urban food analysis
FAO and RUAF have published a very comprehensive Toolkit called “Assessing and planning sustainable city region food systems”. This is the result of a 3 years journey with 7 cities to develop a methodology to analyse urban city food systems that any city around the world can apply.
On home turf: resilience of localised production and informal networks
In their recent paper, Petr Jehlička, Petr Daněk, and Jan Vávra unpick the idea that home gardening, home-grown food, or food self-provisioning is only a coping strategy for those hit with hard times. This highlights the importance to understand what home growing means to people rather than expecting it to fit your expectations.
Joining forces against the urbanisation of hunger
With a projected 2 billion people living in slum by 2030, what can city or national governments in the North do to help alleviate global urban food poverty? The key for city cooperation lies in giving time to people to help them find their own ways instead of imposing solutions upon them.
Defining local: the quest continues
Who can precisely define local food? Food miles is only part of the picture. Moving away from dualistic thinking about local and global, Swiss researchers have identified the different criteria that can be assessed in order to capture the localness of a product.