The story of cities is also the story of managing food production and consumption. The relationship between urban living and attaining quality nutrition, or food safety, is clearly stated in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. While simple, innovative solutions target data collection and urban agriculture, food scarcity remains a major challenge in cities worldwide. There’s a long road ahead for food security as a planning priority.

The way mankind relates to their food is intrinsically related to the way cities have been formed. The first-ever human settlements related to the ability to produce crops, and over the centuries, more efficient agriculture allowed for the advent of trade, markets, and eventually cities. But as technology and social relations developed to shape our built environment, our day-to-day activities seemed increasingly disconnected from this primal yet vital ability to produce and care for our own food. 

From large urban swathes without nearby food production to droughts and potential famine driven by climate change, the challenges addressed by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals can be interpreted as a panorama of themes inexplicably related to that primary notion of humankind: obtaining food. According to the World Urbanization Prospects 2018, the percentage of the world’s population living in cities will grow from 55 percent in 2018 to 68 percent by 2050, and, so, too, will the concern that everybody can properly and safely eat. “In food - the way it is grown, produced, consumed, traded, transported, stored and marketed - lies the fundamental connection,” one 2015 FAO’s report states, “between people and the planet, and the path to inclusive and sustainable economic growth.” 

Food safety relates to the “access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food,” which “is key to sustaining life and promoting good health,” the World Health Organization writes. Assuring food safety requires providing for sustainable food systems, which are the combination of all “elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions, etc) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, and the outputs of these activities, including socio-economic and environmental outcome,” according to the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition. In this manner, having a sustainable food system is not only ensuring future global availability of food, but, also, tying the three dimensions of sustainability – environmental, social and economic – to the four dimensions of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability.

Bringing the production of food into the city in an environmentally, socially, economically safe and respectful way has been a strategy to change our food system into a more sustainable one. While many environmentally-sound architectural designs pop up, it’s still a reality that most of our urban citizens — especially those in peripheral areas — are denied access to arable land, which impacts their health and well-being. No one food garden on a skyscraper rooftop has the ability to solve that issue. However, making small, residual urban spaces productive; creating opportunities for collective development of vegetable gardens; and helping degraded areas of the city transform themselves into greener, food productive ones can create more resilient, healthy and better fed communities.

It’s important to bear in mind that such interventions are subject to the urban regulatory framework, especially for land-use. From a planning perspective, much energy can be directed to promoting food safety by mapping and indicating specific areas in the city primarily dedicated to the production of food, or by creating incentives for those interested in developing urban agriculture experiences. 

Like other urban issues, achieving food safety presents different challenges to different regions. Research in Tamale, Ghana, for example, points to using drones as a tool to inform the planning authorities on the land available for urban and periurban Agriculture – as the sheer lack of data can be an impeditive to planning for urban farming in developing countries. Meanwhile, in the U.S., 50 percent of planners and members of the American Planning Association state to have “non-existent or minimal” engagement with food systems as a significant priority. These missed opportunities could account for an annual food production of 100+ million tonnes, energy savings of up to 15 billion kilowatt hours, and the prevention of up to 57 billion cubic meters in stormwater runoff annually, according to this report. In the years ahead, food safety will stand as an urgent challenge for local agencies in built environment and policy making, and one with widespread global impact at that.

Juliana Moraes Araújo is a Substitute Professor at the Department of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Viçosa, in the area of ​​Graphic Representation. Masters’ degree student at the Postgraduation Program in Architecture and Urbanism of the same University (PPG.au/UFV), in the Urban and Regional Planning line of enquiry, researching Urban Agriculture as a form of sustainable development and appropriation of space in the city (2018-2020). Graduated BA Architecture and Urbanism from the Federal University of Viçosa (2016), with an exchange period at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, at Science Without Borders Programme (2013-2014). Interested in research and acting in the areas of Urban Planning and Collaborative Urbanism, Urban Agriculture, Collaborative Processes and City appropriation.

Renata Carvalho is an Architect and Urbanist (Universidade Federal de Vicosa, Brazil) with a Lato Sensu specialisation in Sustainability of the Built Environment (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil). Her recent research addresses walkability surrounding metro stations in Belo Horizonte (Brazil Infrastructure Institute, 2019). Broader interests include sustainable urban mobility and transport terminus design, focusing on cities for people. Former research analysed residential architecture and modes of living (CIHEL, Lisbon, 2013). She is currently a Chevening scholar for a MSc in Transport and City Planning at University College London and a partner at the Architecture and Urbanism firm Toca in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.