HCP publishes Special Issue on “Urban Food Deserts: Perspectives from the Global South” in the journal Sustainability, guest edited by Jonathan Crush and Zhenzhong Si. The industrialization of the urban food system, alongside the proliferation of supermarkets, has dramatically transformed the landscape of food accessibility in cities. In many countries, especially the US, the spatial consolidation of food provisioning has deprived many urban neighbourhoods of easy access to food, particularly foodstuffs integral to a healthy diet. These often socioeconomically disadvantaged urban areas are referred to as “food deserts”. However, studies of urban food deserts in cities of the Global South are sparse, given their complicated urban food systems with the strong presence of informal food economies and diverse food sources. The Hungry Cities Partnership organized this Special Issue to focus on both empirical studies and theoretical discussions of urban food deserts in the Global South. Papers in this Special Issue cover a wide array of topics in several geographic regions including food deserts, food swamps and its connections with household food insecurity in African cities, food sources and accessibility in Brazil, and urban household dietary diversity in China. These papers shed light on most recent changes of the urban food system in cities of the Global South. Together, they contribute to studies of informal food sector, food deserts and urban policies that contribute to or mitigate the existence and development of food deserts.
The papers in this Special Issue are:
Florian Kroll, Elizabeth Catherina Swart, Reginald Adjetey Annan, Anne Marie Thow, David Neves, Charles Apprey, Linda Nana Esi Aduku, Nana Ama Frimpomaa Agyapong, Jean-Claude Moubarac, Andries du Toit, Robert Aidoo and David Sanders. 2019. Mapping Obesogenic Food Environments in South Africa and Ghana: Correlations and Contradictions. Sustainability 11(14), 3924.
Jeremy Wagner, Lucy Hinton, Cameron McCordic, Samuel Owuor, Guénola Capron and Salomón Gonzalez Arellano. 2019. Do Urban Food Deserts Exist in the Global South? An Analysis of Nairobi and Mexico City. Sustainability 11(7), 1963.
Jane Battersby. 2019. The Food Desert as a Concept and Policy Tool in African Cities: An Opportunity and a Risk. Sustainability 11(2), 458.
Cameron McCordic and Ezequiel Abrahamo. 2019. Family Structure and Severe Food Insecurity in Maputo and Matola, Mozambique. Sustainability 11(1), 267.
Jonathan Crush, Ndeyapo Nickanor and Lawrence Kazembe. 2019. Informal Food Deserts and Household Food Insecurity in Windhoek, Namibia. Sustainability 11(1), 37.
Feyisayo Odunitan-Wayas, Kufre Okop, Robert Dover, Olufunke Alaba, Lisa Micklesfield, Thandi Puoane, Monica Uys, Lungiswa Tsolekile, Naomi Levitt, Jane Battersby, Hendriena Victor, Shelly Meltzer and Estelle V. Lambert. 2018. Food Purchasing Characteristics and Perceptions of Neighborhood Food Environment of South Africans Living in Low-, Middle- and High-Socioeconomic Neighborhoods. Sustainability 10(12), 4801.
Camila Aparecida Borges, William Cabral-Miranda and Patricia Constante Jaime. 2018. Urban Food Sources and the Challenges of Food Availability According to the Brazilian Dietary Guidelines Recommendations. Sustainability 10(12), 4643.
Bruce Frayne and Cameron McCordic. 2018. Food Swamps and Poor Dietary Diversity: Longwave Development Implications in Southern African Cities. Sustainability 10(12), 4425.
Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Jonathan Crush, Zhiying Xu, Xianjin Huang, Steffanie Scott, Shuangshuang Tang and Xiang Zhang. 2018. The Impact of Proximity to Wet Markets and Supermarkets on Household Dietary Diversity in Nanjing City, China. Sustainability 10(5), 1465.