Urban Agriculture and a Planning Approach to Urban Food Systems

This paper discusses ways to support city food systems in the context of rapidly changing social, physical and ecological environments so that urban and peri-urban populations maintain and improve access to safe and nutritious food. Because access to food is more problematic for those who are socially and structurally disempowered, and because they have fewer income-earning opportunities open to them, interventions that improve social standing, strengthen social networks, and enable access to decision-makers and other resources, can not only improve food security but also fundamentally change the structural factors that reproduce poverty and marginalization.