Introduction
Overview
Urban social movements concerned with social equity, environmental and food justice themes are emerging as influential agents in shaping good urban governance outcomes. These outcomes include improved interconnectivity among cityâcommunity activists, public and private stakeholders in local urban food systems and re-prioritising urban planning to accommodate and promote activities that improve urban resilience, social cohesion and local food economies. Alongside rapid urban population growth, various forms of urban agriculture (UA) activity, such as community and market gardens and farmersâ markets are also expanding, in the so-called âGlobal North and Southâ.
For nearly a decade, Iâve explored UA conceptually, as well as its various manifestations, scale, practice and utility in urban areas in developed and developing countries. During this time, I have recognised growing sociopolitical interest in the potential of UA to strengthen social cohesion and improve urban health and food knowledge (the latter is an often-neglected aspect of food security) in marginalised communities. Secondly, although UA exists in developed and developing countries, it is worthwhile to recognise its distinctions, in theory and practice, in âNorth and Southâ cities. These distinctions are important, as issues of social equity, food justice and inclusive approaches to sustainable urban policymaking play out differently (if at all, in some contexts) in urban policy spaces and in parallel with an urbanising global population.
Particular benefits of the content of this book are largely offered through extensive case study examples, which are drawn from my own research, as well as others, on experiences of UA social equity and urban governance in cities in developing and developed countries. Admittedly, while attempting to offer some form of critique of these experiences from Global North and South perspectives is daunting, I believe it is still worthwhile. In guiding this analysis, I adopt urban governance and social mobility frameworks. This joins together structural, cultural and rational actor approaches to cross-comparison. Discussed below, UN-Habitat offers a good overview of urban governance, which is a broad concept that includes the role of institutions and individuals in creating an enabling environment. While I certainly agree that poverty and food survival challenges differ in scope and scale in a North and South comparison (and absolute vs relative poverty), the bigger picture of expanding city populations and related challenges to food security impacts both contexts. From urban governance discourses, how North and South cities respond to or facilitate urban-socio mobility, as people seek to meet various needs, such as fresh food access and availability, will feature in the case study discussion in a later chapter. Responses will differ, as agendas and participantsâ do differâlocally and globallyâleading to different UA outcomes.
In this introductory chapter, ideas in critical urban theory, with respect to social production of local food space, food security, with a focus on current research will be explored in the literature on UA from cities in North and South contexts. Mentioned above, these experiences will be analysed using urban governance and social movement frameworks. In Chapter 2, following an overview of UA, distinctions and similarities in UA concepts and praxis will be identified between North and South contexts, where social equity (fairness), in terms of food justice, and inclusivity in urban socio-economic policy are highly significant. In Chapter 3, case study examples are drawn from my own research, as well as others, to discern to what extent UA in cities in developing and developed countries are creating spaces of social and food justice, and related challenges and opportunities for cities to provide and communities to access space. Chapter 4 will conclude with a discussion of socially produced spaces and food justice through UA. What are the possibilities and constraints of urban food movements in claiming their ârights to the cityâ in the North and South?
Insights from my research experiences will highlight issues related to âgoodâ urban governance and urban social movements leading to cityâcommunity partnerships in planning for local and regional food systems. Normative or conventional voices claim that UA has limited economic value and increasing urban densities are inherently bad news for UA. These voices are increasingly becoming crowded out by success stories of community-driven urban food policy change. Its acceptance as a normative challenge is more political or ideological, than a real or physical obstacle to change in the urban food system. Through the experiences of social movements in producing urban food spaces under the auspices of âgoodâ and âbadâ urban governance, we can critique the potential for communities and local city councils to collaborate for reimagining urban spaces that emphasise social, economic and environmental justice for sustainable urban development, as opposed to âactually existing neoliberalismâ (Brenner and Theodore 2002; Brenner 2012; Okereke 2007; Eizenberg 2012).
Ultimately, this book is concerned with understanding the theoretical and applied implications of cityâcommunity interactions in UA and the processes by which alternative social-spatial production influences mainstream or broader perceptions and attitudes towards sustainable urban development.
When It Comes to Food Security, Is Urban Agriculture a âBig Failâ?
UA, including peri-urban, is a broad research field that, since the 1980s, has grown into a field of multidisciplinary study. Earlier applied and thematic foci of UA had generated a wealth of knowledge on determining its socioeconomic nature and geographic extent, its impact on household food security and as an income source, its role in the informal economy and offering descriptions of various types of urban and peri-urban production systems (Thaman 1975; Sanyal 1985, 1987; Rogerson 1992; Smith and Tevera 1997; Mougeot 2000; Thornton 2008; Mun Bbun and Thornton 2013; Malan 2015). There is some debate on the actual impact of UA on food security, though these critiques tend to focus on food access and availability, while missing the significance of UA practices in improving and preserving food utilisation and knowledge. Following the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome, UN FAO defined food security as a situation that exists:
[W]hen all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (FAO 2015)
The FAO (2013) further explains food security as an outcome of the following four main dimensions:
- Access to food, or to what extent is access prohibited by political, social, cultural and economic factors
- Availability of food, or supply-side factors shaping sufficient quantities of food and at prices that people can afford
- Utilization of food, which considers dietary, nutritional knowledge and know-how of food preparation, as well as basic gardening skills to grow your own food (and, I would add, to teach these skills to others).
- Stability of the other three dimensions over time.
It is the âuse or knowledge of foodâ that is of particular interest here. For households experiencing high rates of urban food insecurity in South African cities (Johannesburg as high as 77%), food needs are largely met through the assistance of South Africaâs substantial social welfare system to purchase food on the informal market (Thornton 2008, 2012; Battersby 2011, 2012; Malan 2015). While collecting household surveys during my fieldwork in South African townships, access to the cash economy through social welfare grants and the negative stigma attached by the youth to food growing (not âmodernâ or âsomething my grandparents had to do to surviveâ, in Thornton 2012) would hav...