Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

Morgan (2009) introduces a special issue of International Planning Studies devoted tothe topic of ‘feeding the city: the challenge of urban food planning’ by noting theAmerican Planning Association’s observation that food planning has been a ‘puzzlingomission’ in urban planning theory and practice until recently, mainly because it is seentypically as a rural issue and hence beyond the scope of the urban policy agenda. Heargues against this perception on the basis that ‘food systems’ are inextricably linked toand affected by a host of other urban policy concerns such as public health, socialjustice, economic development and resource management and while urban agriculturemay have faded from cities of the global north, it has always been a major activity incities of the south.While there is no obvious consensus around what ‘food planning’ means or who ‘foodplanners’ are, there are signs that food policy debates are slowly being opened up tonew elements and concerns. No longer seen as purely a matter of rural agriculture,practiced by an increasingly corporatised body of farmers and agri-businesses, newconcerns for public health, social justice and ecological integrity have entered foodpolicy debates in general, led by advocates of urban agriculture.Morgan concludes (2009: p. 347):Feeding the city in a sustainable fashion that is to say, in way that iseconomically efficient, socially just and ecologically sound - is one of thequintessential challenges of the twenty-first century and it will not be met withouta greater political commitment to urban food planning and a bolder vision for thecity.Increasingly, comprehensive urban and metropolitan plans are acknowledging thatspatial planning and land use regulation are tools for achieving cities that are moreliveable, sustainable, prosperous, resilient and just. The nature of these plans istherefore changing, with greater emphasis being given to the ends as well as themeans of planning. Nevertheless, we should remember that one of the foundationaltexts of the modern planning movement, Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities ofTomorrow, first published in 1898, included the ‘agricultural estate’ as an essentialelement of an economically viable Garden City as well as the opportunity for domesticproduction by each householder.As one of the most commonplace urban agricultural activities, community gardeninghas been the subject of a number of studies of both impact and potential impact. Intheir study of community gardeners in Perth, Evers and Hodgson (2011) stress theimportance of locating community garden initiatives within broader alternative foodnetworks. These have emerged in response to growing dissatisfaction with themainstream offerings of supermarkets, a desire to consume more locally grownproduce and a preference for smaller scale and locally owned enterprises.Nevertheless, they warn also of the perils of ‘defensive localism’ (p. 589) in which anuncritical assumption is made that anything that is produced locally is good andconversely that anything imported (certainly from another country) is not so good oreven bad. Morgan (2010: p. 345) argues instead for a more judicious combination oflocally-produced seasonal food with fairly traded global products in what he calls ‘acosmopolitan conception of sustainability.Evers and Hodgson note the importance of government intervention in support of urbanagriculture:In order for urban agriculture to thrive, it must also be supported by local andstate governments: one of the reasons for the disappearance of dairies andmarket gardens from the Australian urban fabric has been changes in land useplanning (2011: p. 590).Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 96