Bringing together urban systems and food systems theory and research is overdue: understanding the relationships between food and nutrition infrastructures along a continuum of contested and hybrid access

Jane Battersby, Mercy Brown-Luthango, Issahaka Fuseini, Herry Gulabani, Gareth Haysom, Ben Jackson, Vrashali Khandelwal, Hayley MacGregor, Sudeshna Mitra, Nicholas Nisbett (), Iromi Perera, Dolf te Lintelo, Jodie Thorpe and Percy Toriro
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Jane Battersby: University of Cape Town
Mercy Brown-Luthango: University of Cape Town
Issahaka Fuseini: University of Ghana
Herry Gulabani: Indian Institute for Human Settlements
Gareth Haysom: University of Cape Town
Ben Jackson: University of Sussex
Vrashali Khandelwal: Indian Institute for Human Settlements
Hayley MacGregor: University of Sussex
Sudeshna Mitra: Indian Institute for Human Settlements
Nicholas Nisbett: University of Sussex
Iromi Perera: Colombo Urban Lab
Dolf te Lintelo: University of Sussex
Jodie Thorpe: University of Sussex
Percy Toriro: University of Cape Town

Agriculture and Human Values, 2024, vol. 41, issue 2, No 4, 437-448

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Keywords: Food; Malnutrition; Infrastructure; Assemblage; Marginalisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-023-10507-6

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