Food for the Urban Poor: Safety Nets and Food-Based Social Protection in Manzini,Swaziland

This paper aims to contribute to the urban food security debate by exploring the role of informal safety nets and formal food-based social protection in addressing food insecurity challenges facing low-income urban households in Manzini. The empirical data used in this paper came from two surveys: the first involved 500 households and was undertaken in three low-income areas of Manzini. The second involved a series of in-depth interviews with senior staff at supermarkets and spaza shops. The results reveal that food security challenges are considerable in the low-income areas of Manzini and that, at the same time, various forms of community and intra-household food sharing are an important food source for a minority of poor households in the city. In this regard, the national government needs to consider strengthening food-based social safety net programmes that assist poor and vulnerable groups.     

Urban governance and urban food systems in Africa: Examining the linkages

Urban food systems have increasingly been recognised as a topic that needs to be better understood, in order to address issues of urban food security and urban poverty. This is particularly so in Africa, which has high rates of urban population growth and high levels of urban food insecurity. There has, however, been surprisingly little work on examining the existing processes through which urban food systems are governed. In this article, based on a review of the relevant literature, I examine what we know about urban governance and urban food systems in Africa. The governance of urban food systems in Africa is complex, with a range of governance actors with competing agendas. These governance actors impact on urban food systems, and thus on urban food security, in a variety of ways, including: the impact on food production (e.g. urban and peri-urban agriculture); the impact on the distribution of food; the impact on the retail of food by formal and informal traders; and the impact on food safety. There are many gaps in our knowledge about urban governance and urban food systems in Africa, including: processes in secondary cities; the role of, and impact of, local governments on urban food systems; the impact of inadequate transport systems on food distribution; and the impact of supermarkets (and their expanding supply chains) on urban food systems. We need to better understand existing urban governance processes, and their impacts on urban food systems, in order to be able to collaboratively design interventions to improve urban food security in Africa.     

Probabilistic framework for evaluating food security of households in the aftermath of a disaster

For households of all income levels, and especially for those that are food insecure, food access can be threatened by natural hazards. Extreme natural hazards can disrupt critical infrastructure systems, such as the transportation or electrical power networks, damaging the roads and bridges critical for food supply chains or electrical transmission lines providing electricity for food preservation. Interdependencies among infrastructure systems within the food supply chain make it vulnerable to unanticipated and cascading consequences. Maintaining food security in the aftermath of a natural hazard challenges a community’s resilience, recovery, and social well-being. This study introduces a methodology to consider how the interconnectedness among civil infrastructure systems impacts food-security of urban inhabitants. To this end, different infrastructure systems along with their spatial distribution are modeled to evaluate the restoration of food security within a community. Food security metrics, including food availability, accessibility, and affordability, are defined and quantified to provide risk-informed decision support to policymakers in the aftermath of an extreme natural hazard. The methodology proposed herein that considers system interconnectedness and uncertainties in demand and supply can be applied to identify practical policy interventions to hasten recovery of food systems and reduce the adverse impacts of food-insecurity on a community.     

现代城市农业景观基础设施

摘要：农业生产是城市基础设施的重要组成部分之一,而现代城市普遍存在着一定的农业生产和粮食安全问题。通过对城市的农业生产潜力和景观的农业生产性传统两方面进行研究,探索城市景观与农业生产的关联性,进而提出了现代城市农业景观基础设施的设计思想,并从城市立体农业景观基础设施、城市社区农业景观基础设施和城市农业公园3个方面,结合实例对其空间构成、表现形态、生产模式、公共功能等方面内容进行研究。     

Urban farming associations,youth and food security in post-war Freetown,Sierra Leone

As skyrocketing global food and energy prices have recently triggered a stream of riots in urban centres across sub-Saharan Africa, underscoring the desperation of urban residents as food becomes unobtainable, cities in the West African country of Sierra Leone face a series of new challenges as the country emerges from a decade of civil war during the 1990s. Focusing on the question of urban food security in and around Sierra Leone’s capital city, Freetown, this paper explores the proliferation of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) as a response to the rising demand for food and employment. In this context, the paper examines a recent upsurge in cooperative activity associated with UPA in Freetown, drawing upon the knowledge and perceptions of those involved in urban farming associations. In seeking to better understand the associational and livelihood strategies of urban residents in the post-war era, the paper highlights how UPA activities are currently driving a resurgence in community-based cooperation, a development which could play an important role in safeguarding livelihoods and urban food security during a particularly critical point in the country’s post-conflict recovery trajectory.     

Innovative Food Procurement Strategies of Women Living in Khayelitsha,Cape Town

The combination of persistent levels of inequality and poverty, alongside the advent of rapid urbanisation, mean urban food insecurity is set to be one of the biggest development challenges of this century. As women play a crucial role in the food security status of urban poor households, understanding and supporting the life-sustaining food procurement practices used by women ought to be a key strategy in addressing urban food insecurity. Particularly, the paper draws on primary qualitative research I conducted with women from Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest informal settlement. This case study explored the beliefs, practices and preferences that govern women’s food procurement choices. The study found that women adopt a range of innovative food procurement strategies, which significantly improve household food security prospects. These include buying in bulk, skilfully navigating the informal and the formal food economies, utilising their social networks and trading off food with other important non-food expenses. Understanding these practices can provide greater insight into how best to enhance urban food security. The implications are that women need to be better supported rather than, as most mainstream programmes suggest, encouraged to take on more work outside the household, whilst still faced with the lion’s share of housework.     

Urban sprawl,food security and agricultural systems in developing countries: A systematic review of the literature

In developing countries, urbanisation and associated demographic changes pose unprecedented challenges in terms of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. A systematic review methodology was conducted, combined with data synthesis, to examine the interactions between urban sprawl, land and resource use changes, agricultural production and food security in developing countries. The Web of Science and Scopus databases were searched to identify 188 relevant articles. The results revealed that existing literature has widely failed to take interactions between different aspects of urban food systems (UFS) into account, indicating disconnects and fragmentation in the approaches used to analyse these interactions. Therefore a further focus on food system transformation pathways, system feedbacks and trade-offs is recommended. Moreover, the results imply that UFS are complex interlinked systems and therefore that policies intending to assure food security in developing countries need to consider these interlinkages and approach them holistically. Finally, an absence of studies examining urban and rural systems from an interconnected perspective was identified. An acknowledgement of such rural-urban connectivity gaps is crucial in order to ensure more inclusive links within food systems and agricultural value chains, and achieve more resilient food systems and more sustainable urbanisation in developing countries.     

CONSTRICTION IN THE VARIETY OF URBAN FOOD PANTRY DONATIONS BY PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS

ABSTRACT: The urban poor face a number of health challenges, many linked to lack of sufficient and consistent access to nutritious foods. Social ecology models demonstrate the negative impacts of high food cost and limited availability in urban areas. These studies note that “food deserts” have a profound impact on physiological pathologies of urban poor populations. Food pantries are an understudied feature of these urban landscapes. To address this gap, this study surveys the contents of food pantry donations during the month of September 2008. Data demonstrate the socioeconomic impact of reductions of charitable food donations on the diets of the urban poor.     

西方城市规划的新课题:社区食物系统

社区食物系统是西方城市规划的新课题。通过对西方城市规划近十几年关于食物问题的研究的梳理,研究首先说明了城市规划对食物系统的长期忽视及对食物问题的认识不足,进而阐述了食物问题的重要性和必要的价值判断;然后以现实中社区食物系统的构成和产生的主要矛盾说明了食物问题的复杂性和规划涉足食物领域的必要性;最后从规划干预社区食物系统的优势、出发点、任务及当前的一些研究重点方面,综合论述了规划在社区食物系统中所承担的职能。     

Gendered Mobilities and Food Access in Blantyre,Malawi

Access to food, rather than a shortage of food availability, is the central problem for urban household food security. Blantyre presents a useful case study for demonstrating the importance of linking gender and urban food security. Rates of urban food insecurity are less severe than in other cities surveyed by AFSUN. Yet, female-centred households were twice as likely to be severely food insecure as nuclear households. This paper offers some explanations for the survey findings by drawing on qualitative research to understand the gendered geographies of food access in Blantyre. The first point is that gender shapes mobility, which in turn shapes a household’s ability to increase its food security by procuring food from the most affordable sources, particularly peri-urban markets. The second point is that gender shapes a household’s ability to produce its own food, a popular livelihood strategy in Blantyre that often mitigates the effects of low incomes on household food security. The third point is that gender influences a person’s potential income, which shapes the household’s economic access to food. These three points demonstrate the multi-dimensional relationship between gender and urban food security.     

美国食物系统规划研究

食物系统关系到粮食安全与城市可持续发展,却一直为规划师所忽略。自2005年＂食物规划＂（Food Planning）的研讨主题第一次出现在美国规划协会年会后,食物系统规划成为美国规划界关注热点。本文通过文献阅读、访谈和实地调研,探讨了食物系统概念和现状,以及美国食物系统规划的探索历程、指导方针和工作范畴,并对相关案例进行了分析。粮食安全是我国政府工作的重中之重,本研究希望能为我国食物系统和都市农业纳入城乡规划提供理论支持和经验借鉴,保障我国城市粮食安全和全面可持续发展。     

国内外都市可食用景观研究进展及趋势

随着城镇化的发展,都市的环境与生活都发生了一系列改变。可食用景观,即以可食用植物进行的景观营造,也备受关注。都市可食用景观的核心在于以"食物、种植、环境营造"对都市变迁中人与环境、人与人的关联性进行维系和再造。城镇化背景下,食物系统及生态系统服务、社会服务效用,成为当下风景园林学科可食用景观相关研究成果中的主要方向。相比国外,中国都市可食用景观的研究仍处于发展阶段,在可食用景观适地性研究及评价、社区及城市可食用景观的风景园林规划设计方法,以及可食用景观与教育的结合等方面还有待深化。未来的研究需要进一步针对都市变迁进行可食用景观价值的拓展,发展本土实践路径;开展跨学科合作,进行因人、适地的可食用景观多元化技术研究;结合资源体系,进行可食用景观的全周期思考。     

A Management Concept for Driving Sustainability in Marginalised Communities in South Africa

Cities are the frontline for addressing issues of global sustainability. This notion has been inducted into the development discourse of the Global North with varying degrees of success. However, urban environments in the Global South face unique challenges, and Western-derived perceptions of sustainability are inappropriate for these regions. This paper examines issues of sustainability within impoverished urban communities in South Africa. Survey interviews helped inform and examination of South Africa’s urban morphology to determine the specific obstacles to sustainable urban development of marginalised communities in South Africa. In response, the study proposes the application of the principles founded in facilities management (FM) at a macro/urban scale. Urban facilities management (UFM) is a new alignment of FM that advocates a holistic view of an urban precinct to facilitate systemic solutions with a variety of urban role-players. A conceptual framework for a UFM aligned development process for marginalised communities of the Global South is developed based on issues identified through the interviews. This framework seeks to enable a comprehensive integration of social, environmental, economic, and institutional dimensions of sustainability into an urban development model. In doing so, it holds the promise of unlocking the opportunities for developing/emerging countries to pioneer global sustainability.     

Africa’s Urban Food Deserts

Since the mid-1990s, the concept of the ‘urban food desert’ has been extensively applied to deprived neighbourhoods in European and North American cities. Food deserts are usually characterised as economically-disadvantaged areas where there is relatively poor access to healthy and affordable food because of the absence of modern retail outlets (such as supermarkets). This idea has not been applied in any systematic way to cities of the Global South and African cities in particular. Yet African cities contain many poor neighbourhoods whose residents are far more food insecure and malnourished than their counterparts in the North. This paper reviews some of the challenges and difficulties of conceiving of highly food insecure areas of African cities as conventional food deserts. At the same time, it argues that the concept, appropriately reformulated to fit African realities of rapid urbanisation and multiple food procurement systems, is a useful analytical tool for African urban researchers and policy-makers. Although supermarkets are becoming an important element of the food environment in African cities, a simple focus on modern retail does not adequately capture complexity of the African food desert. In the African context, the food deserts concept requires a much more sophisticated understanding of over-lapping market and non-market food sources, of the nature and dynamism of the informal food economy, of the inter-household differences that lead to different experiences of food insecurity and of the Africa-specific conditions that lead to compromised diets, undernutrition and social exclusion. The papers in this special issue explore these different aspects of African food deserts defined as poor, often informal, urban neighbourhoods characterised by high food insecurity and low dietary diversity, with multiple market and non-market food sources but variable household access to food.     

我国城镇化中后期的若干挑战与机遇——城市规划变革的新动向

我国的城镇化进入中后期将面临机动化带来的环境污染、郊区化、区域均衡等问题,同时面临着水资源和能源短缺的局面以及低碳减排的压力。应对这些挑战,城市规划工作者必须学习和应用正在涌现的各种相关的先进技术,变革现有的规划理论和工作方法,努力探索一条中国特色的低碳的城镇化路子。     

THE RURAL IS NOT REMOTE — THE CASE OF COMPANY DRINKS

The article focuses on the undesirable binary between the rural and the urban and uses Company Drinks as an example of a reverse ruralurban relationship, where an inner city population migrates temporarily to the countryside, which is relevant to the hop-picking tradition (“hopping”) practiced by working-class families from London’s East End. In this case, a working-class community has developed its own rural practice, moving between rural and urban settings on a regular basis. Company Drinks is a new model cultural enterprise that uses the collective memory of hopping as a starting point to rethink and reintroduce an adaptive collective production cycle into East London everyday life. With various successful activities being held, going picking has been far from an East End tradition and become a universal activity recognized and appreciated across different cultures and landscapes. The author believes that rural-urban link cannot be controlled from a distance. Rural society offers knowledge and resource that can empower urban communities, and can test and provide conditions for alternatives to urban lifestyles.     

Growing Out of Poverty: Does Urban Agriculture Contribute to Household Food Security in Southern African Cities?

The literature on urban agriculture (UA) as a food security and poverty alleviation strategy is bifurcating into two distinct positions. The first is that UA is a viable and effective pro-poor development strategy, and the second is that UA has demonstrated limited positive outcomes on either food security or poverty. These two positions are tested against data generated by the African Urban Food Security Network’s (AFSUN) baseline food security survey undertaken in 11 Southern African cities. At the aggregate level, the analysis shows that (1) urban context is an important predictor of rates of household engagement in UA—the economic, political, and historical circumstances and conditions of a city are key factors that either promote or hinder UA activity and scale; (2) UA is not an effective household food security strategy for poor urban households—the analysis found few significant relationships between UA participation and food security; and (3) household levels of earnings and land holdings may mediate UA impacts on food security—wealthier households derive greater net food security benefits from UA than poor households do. These findings call into question the potential benefits of UA as a broad urban development strategy and lend support to the position that UA has limited poverty alleviation benefits under current modes of practice and regulation.     

论“反规划”

指出导致系统性的、全国性的城市环境危机和城市功能与结构混乱的主要根源之一是计划经济体制下形成的、“规模-性质-空间布局”为模式的物质空间规划编制方法论;基于现行方法论的城市空间发展规划是一种建立在不确定基础上的空中楼阁。在此基础上提出“反规划”途径:强调一种“逆”向的规划过程,“负”的规划成果,即生态基础设施,用它来引导和框限城市的空间发展。文章强调,人地关系的和谐是解决一切城市问题的关键“。反规划”途径试图通过建立保障自然人文过程安全和健康的景观安全格局,来综合地解决国土生态安全问题、城市的功能结构问题、交通问题、城市特色以及城市的形态问题。     

Food for urban spaces: The development of urban food production in England and Wales

This paper considers the gradual re‐emergence of urban food production initiatives in the local authorities of England and Wales. A typology of local authority actions is constructed which links urban food initiatives to broader Local Agenda 21 processes and community participation initiatives. Several key dimensions are identified which need to be assembled in local authorities if urban food production is to become more widespread. These include: the development of the enabling role of local authorities, the commitment of member involvement, seeing urban food production as a central element in progressing sustainable and community development, developing a more proactive and integrated planning policy which develops capacity and reverses the steady decline in allotment provision. Making the links between food production, community involvement and effective land‐use planning strategies is a key element in progressing food production and reducing the conception of urban food production as simply a contradiction in terms. This will involve the engagement of local authorities, and particularly planning in the broader aspects of the politics and local economy of food currently emerging amongst urban consumers.     

城市绿化安全问题的初探

从目前城市绿化发展中暴露出城市绿化安全问题,通过揭示城市绿化安全概念并分析其特点,提出当前城市绿化安全问题的建议。