Food in cities
Urban food production,
provisioning and
citizenship
MUNI, Brno, 29th March 2022
Dr Daniel Keech, CCRI,
University of Gloucestershire
dkeech@glos.ac.uk
1
Bamberg, Germany. Image – R. Rinklef
https://tichaudrzitelnost.geogr.muni.cz/wp-
content/uploads/2022/01/Zahradkarske-
osady-2021.pdf
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Outline for the session
• Some definitions and characteristics assigned to UA
• Illustration of the diversity of these using references from
the literature
• Some illustrations from my research in Ghent and
Bamberg – rather different stories.
• Time for questions, then a class exercise
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Urban Agriculture
• Spatially - not in the countryside, but possibly on
the edge of the countryside; definitely in the city.
• Functionally – may include household and
community provisioning, social cohesion,
innovation and environmental land use.
• Generally different emphases in global ‘North’ and
‘South’;
• Not everyone agrees on whether UA is a new
thing or a really ancient practice. Partly this is
linked to rapid urbanisation.
Urbanisation trends 1950-2050
(% urban) (UN 2014)
Region 1950 2050
Africa 14.4 56.0
Asia 17.5 64.4
Europe 51.3 81.2
Latin/Caribb 41.4 86.0
North Amer 63.9 87.3
Oceania 62.4 74.0
Steel, C. (2020) Sitopia: How Food Can
Save the World. London, Chatto &
Windus
Thornton, A. (ed.) (2020) Urban Food
Democracy in the Global North and
South. Cham, Palgrave MacMillan.
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=XaEKJ5Vv3Zg
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What is UA (1)?
‘…the production of food in city spaces.’ (Keech & Redepenning 2020). ‘… has
various functions in the urban system’. (de Zeeuw & Drechsel 2015: vii) ‘…As the
name suggests, UA is any food production in urban areas… in some cases
production can occur on top of buildings themselves.’ (Behrens et al. 2020: 172)
‘… become an increasingly relevant topic in the science and planning of
urban food systems aimed at reducing food insecurity at the level of the
household…and community. … Peri-urban agriculture is a residual form of
agriculture at the fringes of growing cities… (Opitz et al. 2015) – see also
http://www.ccri.ac.uk/covid19-food-db/
‘Urban food growing … a post-modern response to socio-economic
problems associated with the … post-war ideas of modernisation and
related failings of neo-liberal urban industrial growth.’ (Thornton 2019: 3)
Grow Up Urban Farms, London.
Image Mandy Zammit.
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What is UA (2)?
‘…includes small-intensive urban farms, food production on
housing estates, land sharing, rooftop gardens and
beehives, schoolyard greenhouses, restaurant-supported
salad gardens, public space food production, guerrilla
gardening, allotments, balcony and windowsill vegetable
growing and other initiatives.’ (Tornaghi 2014)
‘The growing costs of transporting food will increase the
demand for urban agriculture spaces in cities by compelling
planners with the task of integrating the urban open space
system, as well as local, fresh food markets as standard
elements of urban infrastructure.’ (Russo & Cirella 2019)
Pics: www.gruen-in-der-stadt.de and Norwegian Government.
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Self-sufficiency and participation
• ‘Who Feeds Bristol?’ (Carey 2013)
• Lincoln Food Food Partnership
newsletter April 2020
• Rosario – UA to address poverty
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Central and Eastern Europe
• What is alternative and where?
• Brno: centre of Czech AFN expertise.
+ SlowFood Central Europe.
• https://foodpathsnetwork.slowfood.com/
• Research in Moravia-Silesia shows a
higher intensity of AFNs close to
cities; organic farms not integrated
with AFNS (Hruška et al 2020).
‘Thinking like an Eastern European’
(Jehlička et al. 2020)
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(Urban) food and gender
• Starting point: inequality. ‘Women do 66% the world’s work,
produce 50% of the food, but earn 10% of the income and own
1% property.’ In HCT, women = 70% workforce. (UN Women
2013).
• Multiple urban ‘foodscapes’: home, shops, workplace, on the
move, eating out. (Parham 2015).
• Urban food projects often blend co-operative cooking, childfriendly
growing and are inclusive or reflective of the cultures
living in the city.
Eileen Cowen (2020) https://medium.com/the-innovation/selling-domesticity-how-
food-and-consumption-launched-a-feminist-revolution-5bd01dba9b02
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Food feminism and the city
• The statistics → concept of embodiment of pain /
exhaustion of everyday labour. Raises questions about
work and power in the food chain. SDG5.
• ‘The ubiquity of food and gender difference in all
societies makes the overlapping of food and gender
studies particularly constructive for a social progress
agenda.’ (Horvorka 2013)
• Changing urban open space design: safe, clean,
convivial, child friendly etc…
• Feminism: powerful lens which shines a light not only
on the lived food experiences of city women, but also
more generally: justice, citizenship, alternative
economics, sustainability and diversity.
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Locality diversity and/through creative practice
Image: Sara Hannant
https://www.sustainweb.org/news/01_2004_from_brick
_lane_to_bread_street/
Farming as confrontation
Agnes Denes in her Manhatten
Wheatfield, 1982.
Pic: Donna Svennevik
‘Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept. It
represented food, energy, commerce, world trade,
economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world
hunger and ecological concerns. It was an intrusion into
the Citadel, a confrontation of High Civilisation. Then again
it was also Shangri-La, a small paradise, one’s childhood, a
hot summer afternoon in the country…’
The yield was 1,000lbs of ‘healthy, golden wheat’ worth
£158 from land worth $4.5bn.
The picture can't be displayed.
Image by permission: Zentrum Welderbe Bamberg,
©Jürgen Schraudner.
Zweidler-Plan,1602(LowerGardener’sDistrictinframe)
Source.CityofBamberg
The Lower Market Gardener’s District (1930)
Source. Stadt Bamberg
The Lower Market Gardener’s District (2017)
Source. Bing maps
Images: From left, clockwise Bamberg
Hörnla potato (Slow Food
Presidia); Selbsterntegarten (Transition
Bamberg); Corpus Christi procession
(www.bamberger-
onlinezeitung.de/2014/07/24/maria-
magdalena-schutzheilige-der-gaertner-
wegen-eines-irrtums/)
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www.rabotsite.beMoredetails
Koopmansetal.(2017)
Image – Matt Reed
• Temporary urban brownfield site of 3,000m2 – moving
production concept (consequences?).
• Led by community development organisation to stimulate
integration in Rabot, a neighbourhood with 60
nationalities and poverty/homelessness challenges.
• Project sells its produce for profit to the catering trade.
• Locals and homeless provide labour, rewarded with their
own parcel of land.
• Allotment surplus can be sold to project by parcel holders
and payment in alternative local currency (TAX!).
• This can be spent in the project’s subsidised restaurant and
shop on household goods and other food.
De Site (2) – Parallel economy?
• Long-standing Social Democrat-Green-Liberal city coalition.
Which has prioritised social integration and sustainability. Food
policy, non-meat public food days.
• De Site complemented by Wijveld CSA, urban food production
SMEs, some city-produced foods (mushrooms, veg, honey)
stocked in Delhaize supermarket – but difficult.
• Soil degradation and compaction in intensive agricultural areas
outside the city. Opportunities for closing waste cycles in the
wider city-region?
• In both Bristol and Ghent the alternative food production and
retail systems are a form of active citizenship. Read more at
www.supurbfood.eu
De Site (3) – Some contexts
What have we learnt?
Cities are important as places of food production and always have been.
Urban food can ‘repair’ some of the disconnections associated with
industrialised agriculture, including between town and countryside.
City food economies continue to shape the fabric of cities and offer
multiple social functions
Food culture and identity are complex, dynamic and need to be
democratically renegotiated, sometime with local government
assistance, or sometimes to make policy.
Gender, tradition and innovation are rich research arenas in city food
research and can encourage sustainability solidarity and inclusion.
In Europe, provincial cities, not just larger capitals, are interesting
locations of urban food and reveal ‘rurbanity’.
Classroom exercise
Get into breakout groups. Please develop plan for an
evaluation of an urban food project.
• What kind of project are you evaluating (could be a real
example you know about; or you could just imagine)?
• What exactly are you evaluating and why? (Productive
output, gender issues, functions of the growing space,
innovation, connections with other networks?)
• What research method(s) do you think could work well in
informing your evaluation?
Please work up a brief evaluation plan (in 1 or 2 slides?)
to share with the group. You may need a note-taker
and/or speaker.