Getting food on the table in cities

Food policy debates have become increasingly sophisticated, reaching beyond a sole focus on food security and production to questions of quality, nutrition, affordability, and inclusiveness. Yet this expansion of knowledge has not extended to urban areas. The current issue of Environment and Urbanization attempts to fill this gap with papers from Vietnam, Uganda, Canada, Haiti, Chile, Cambodia, Nepal, and Namibia. These papers address the links between urban food and community building, gender, health, livelihoods, and of course food security. Feedback papers have a strong focus on poverty and exclusion in Asia. These cover collective action for poverty reduction in Southeast Asia; displacement due to urban development in Kolkata; and caste-based segregation in urban India and Pakistan. A wide-ranging paper sets forth some possibilities for a Southern urban practice. And a paper on climate change in cities explores greenspaces as a means of mitigating heat in Taipei.