1st Edition
Feeding Cities Improving local food access, security, and resilience
There is enormous current interest in urban food systems, with a wide array of policies and initiatives intended to increase food security, decrease ecological impacts and improve public health. This volume is a cross-disciplinary and applied approach to urban food system sustainability, health, and equity.
The contributions are from researchers working on social, economic, political and ethical issues associated with food systems. The book's focus is on the analysis of and lessons obtained from specific experiences relevant to local food systems, such as tapping urban farmers markets to address issues of food access and public health, and use of zoning to restrict the density of fast food restaurants with the aim of reducing obesity rates. Other topics considered include building a local food business to address the twin problems of economic and nutritional distress, developing ways to reduce food waste and improve food access in poor urban neighborhoods, and asking whether the many, and diverse, hopes for urban agriculture are justified.
The chapters show that it is critical to conduct research on existing efforts to determine what works and to develop best practices in pursuit of sustainable and socially just urban food systems. The main examples discussed are from the United States, but the issues are applicable internationally.
1. What You Want, When You Want It?
Christopher Bosso
Part 1: Ensuring Food Security
2. Food Security as a Human Rights Issue
Sandra Raponi
3. Population Density, Poverty, and Food Retail Access in the United States: An Empirical Approach
Parke Wilde, Joseph Llobrera, and Michele Ver Ploeg
4. Super-sized Strategies for Improved Health: Does Reducing the Density of Fast Food Restaurants Matter?
Bakeyah Nelson and Karen Banks
5. From Food Access to Food Justice: A Case Study of the Somerville Mobile Farmers’ Market
Sara Shostak, Janaki Blum, Chris Mancini, Luisa Oliveira, Lisa Robinson, and Erica Satin-Hernandez
6. Farm to Home: Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program Access and Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Home Delivery for Homebound Older Adults
Mehreen Ismail and Cara Cuite
Part 2: Building Local Food System Sustainability
7. What Grows in East New York: ‘East New York Farms!’ and Expectations of Urban Agriculture
Sarita Daftary-Steel, Christine M. Porter, Suzanne Gervais, David Vigil, and Daryl Marshall
8. Feeding Community: A Case Study of a Shared-Use Commercial Kitchen in Eastern Connecticut
Hedley Freake and Phoebe Godfrey
9. Developing a Food System-Sensitive Methodology to Transform Food "Waste," Create New Food Businesses, and Address Hunger in Urban Communities
Thomas H. O’Donnell, Jonathan Deutsch, Cathy Yungmann, Alexandra Zeitz, and Solomon H. Katz
Part 3: Ensuring Food System Resilience
10. Food Safety and the Emergency Food Supply Chain: Lessons from North Carolina Food Pantries
Ashley Chaifetz and Benjamin Chapman
11. Creating a Resilience Assessment Framework for Urban Food Systems
Kimberly Zeuli and Austin Nijhuis
Biography
Christopher Bosso is Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Coordinator of the Consortium for Food Systems Sustainability, Health, and Equity at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. His areas of interest include food and environmental policy, science and technology policy, and the governance of emerging technologies.
