TY - JOUR
T1 - Bringing together urban systems and food systems theory and research is overdue
T2 - understanding the relationships between food and nutrition infrastructures along a continuum of contested and hybrid access
AU - Battersby, Jane
AU - Brown-Luthango, Mercy
AU - Fuseini, Issahaka
AU - Gulabani, Herry
AU - Haysom, Gareth
AU - Jackson, Ben
AU - Khandelwal, Vrashali
AU - MacGregor, Hayley
AU - Mitra, Sudeshna
AU - Nisbett, Nicholas
AU - Perera, Iromi
AU - te Lintelo, Dolf
AU - Thorpe, Jodie
AU - Toriro, Percy
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.
PY - 2024/6
Y1 - 2024/6
N2 - Urban dwellers’ food and nutritional wellbeing are both dependent on infrastructure and can be indicative of wider wellbeing in urban contexts and societal health. This paper focuses on the multiple relationships that exist between food and infrastructure to provide a thorough theoretical and empirical grounding to urgent work on urban food security and nutrition in the context of rapid urban and nutrition transitions in the South. We argue that urban systems and food systems thinking have not been well aligned, but that such alignment is not only timely and overdue but also fruitful for both thematic areas of research and policy. We draw in particular on work within wider urban political economy and political ecology that can be classified as part of the ‘infrastructural turn’ that is influential with urban studies but little acknowledged within food studies. Drawing on these literatures helps us to better understand the interrelationships between people, things and ideas that make up both infrastructure and food systems. Policy, planning and research relating to both food and urban systems cannot afford to ignore such interlinkages, though much policy still operates on the neat assumptions of progressive connectivity to ‘the grid’ and formal food retail. Instead we argue how in many urban governance systems, a variety of hybrid mechanisms—on and off the grid, public and private formal and informal—better represent how urban residents, particularly the most marginalised, meet their everyday food and infrastructural needs along a continuum of gridded and off-grid access.
AB - Urban dwellers’ food and nutritional wellbeing are both dependent on infrastructure and can be indicative of wider wellbeing in urban contexts and societal health. This paper focuses on the multiple relationships that exist between food and infrastructure to provide a thorough theoretical and empirical grounding to urgent work on urban food security and nutrition in the context of rapid urban and nutrition transitions in the South. We argue that urban systems and food systems thinking have not been well aligned, but that such alignment is not only timely and overdue but also fruitful for both thematic areas of research and policy. We draw in particular on work within wider urban political economy and political ecology that can be classified as part of the ‘infrastructural turn’ that is influential with urban studies but little acknowledged within food studies. Drawing on these literatures helps us to better understand the interrelationships between people, things and ideas that make up both infrastructure and food systems. Policy, planning and research relating to both food and urban systems cannot afford to ignore such interlinkages, though much policy still operates on the neat assumptions of progressive connectivity to ‘the grid’ and formal food retail. Instead we argue how in many urban governance systems, a variety of hybrid mechanisms—on and off the grid, public and private formal and informal—better represent how urban residents, particularly the most marginalised, meet their everyday food and infrastructural needs along a continuum of gridded and off-grid access.
KW - Assemblage
KW - Food
KW - Infrastructure
KW - Malnutrition
KW - Marginalisation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85174041633&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10460-023-10507-6
DO - 10.1007/s10460-023-10507-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85174041633
SN - 0889-048X
VL - 41
SP - 437
EP - 448
JO - Agriculture and Human Values
JF - Agriculture and Human Values
IS - 2
ER -