Chapter 32 Planning and the quest for sustainable food systems: explorations of unknown territory in planning research

Sustainable urban food districts (SUFD): Strategical spatial planning in urban food systems. An analysis to the Toronto food strategy policy

“…Physical and functional networks improve the business opportunities and the community cooperation, for the development of inter-or intra-sectoral strategic alliances [27]. The food district discloses valuable opportunities with several benefits, mainly in terms of food security, social innovation, community building, social integration and as a medium for urban regeneration and competitive economic development, in the consolidation of sustainable urban systems [2,8,10,14,16,18,24,26]. Food clusters could be described as functional and innovative hubs in networking stakeholders, at a geographic core area for the materialization of sustainable urban food systems [27].…”

“…The more the food system is being dominated by global forces, the greater the value to re-emphasize the uniqueness of territories, the differences between places, regions and cultural distinctiveness of communities [27]. The re-localization of the food system has been widely discussed by scholars [10,14,[16][17][18]24,26,28], agreeing on the definition of local food as a re-territorialized system of relations, cooperation and sustainable alternatives for cities [10,14,18]. This vision is well represented in the so called integrated territorial food geography concept (Figure 1) described by Johannes Wiskerke as a territorial and integrated modus of food governance, linking different public domains and policy objectives (Government, Market and Civil Society) to contribute in sustainable regional development [14,29].…”

“…Nevertheless, it is important to keep the discussion in the current global context, encompassed in the dominant role of international corporations, which need to be re-configured rather than entirely replaced into this territorial perspective [10]. This paper argues that a middle way is possible, whereby planning research may intersect the major opportunities to bring the food issue back to the urban agenda and set a collective and participative discussion on the consolidation of sustainability in the urban systems [18,26]. Their success will depend on the effective capacity of planners and decision makers to build such alliances, serving themselves of food as a common agent for creating strong partnerships, beyond sectoral or institutional boundaries [19].…”

“…2) The emergency food systems in the form of food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens, as a private and public cooperation to alleviate major failures of the previous mentioned system, in benefit of the poor and vulnerable groups of the population. In parallel to these two, the alternative food systems (AFS) emerged as a reactionary movement to loosed connections of local farmers and city consumers, viewed as a re-territorialisation process of a so called "co-producer' dynamic form of cooperatives, farmers markets and community supported agriculture farms with a strong emphasis on environmental sustainable food production, local and community bonds [17,18]. The latter, aggregates an emergent group, the so-called community food security movement, bridging conventional channels with sustainable agriculture communities [8,10,12,18].…”

“…In parallel to these two, the alternative food systems (AFS) emerged as a reactionary movement to loosed connections of local farmers and city consumers, viewed as a re-territorialisation process of a so called "co-producer' dynamic form of cooperatives, farmers markets and community supported agriculture farms with a strong emphasis on environmental sustainable food production, local and community bonds [17,18]. The latter, aggregates an emergent group, the so-called community food security movement, bridging conventional channels with sustainable agriculture communities [8,10,12,18]. It is in this foodscape, where a complex net of power relations is forged, creating a strong concentration of players with dominant relations from the conventional food systems in the form of corporate organizations, with a clear and predominant globalized and monopolistic character.…”