Urban Food Systems Strategies: A Promising Tool for Implementing the SDGs in Practice †

Abstract

The UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the transition from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), heralds an important turn in global sustainability policy. With implementation now taking place in all countries, regardless of GDP, a key question is how affluent governments in large metropolitan areas can effectively contribute to global sustainable development. This paper argues that urban food systems strategies-a relatively new tool in local policymaking in the Global North-have the potential to amplify and consolidate national and international efforts in this direction and facilitate a more synergistic approach to SDG implementation. An in-depth comparative analysis of the 2030 Agenda and the sustainable food systems strategies of five of the ten largest cities in North America-New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto-helps to uncover key gaps and areas of convergence between goals, objectives, and evaluation frameworks. Goal-and indicator-level analyses cast light on promising areas for cross-jurisdictional cooperation and suggest that, while not without limitations, urban food systems strategies offer manifold pathways to streamline global, national, and local implementation efforts and effectively forward the 2030 Agenda over the next decade.

Change Agents’ Perspectives on Spatial–Relational Proximities and Urban Food Niches

“…This urban density made it easier for them to form local networks for exchanging experiences and to get in contact with other niche and regime actors. Our results are in line with Fuenfschilling et al [63], Wolfram [64], and Wolfram and Frantzeskaki [30] who acknowledge the urban area as a melting pot for experimentation.…”

“…Cities in different parts of the world have been increasingly acknowledged as experimentation places for niche innovations [28,29]. In order to develop sustainable urban food systems, the importance of local governance and the creation of local policies in favor of this development are growingly recognized [24,30,31]. We chose the city of Vienna in Austria as the location for our empirical study to shed light on the development of urban food niches.…”

“…For more institutional proximity (i.e., legal change in favor of sustainability transition), CAs need to be able to participate in political dialogue at the city level. Food policy councils are organizational innovations enhancing participatory decision making and effective policy implementation in cities such as Toronto, New York and Chicago [30]. A new food policy council was founded in Vienna in 2019.…”

Measuring Progress in Sustainable Food Cities: An Indicators Toolbox for Action

“…However, efforts to align local exercises with more widely used frameworks are still relevant. This is the case of the use of SAFA guidelines to develop an urban food governance framework for Basel [46] or the establishment of connections between indicators used by different North American cities in their urban food strategies and the Sustainable Development Goals [54]. Despite these efforts, aggregation still constitutes a key challenge.…”

Urban food systems as vehicles for sustainability transitions

“…Local and regional food system plans and policies are emerging as parts of national and municipality efforts towards sustainable development (Ilieva, 2017). The national food policy plans are more general, see e.g., Sweden's national food policy (Government Offices of Sweden, 2017), while local strategies aim to embrace the whole context from farm to consumer's table and to provide an integrated policy framework related to the local and regional preconditions (Ilieva, 2017). Such food system strategies exist for several large cities in North America, e.g., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, as well as for several cities in Canada like Toronto, Seattle and Vancouver.…”