Publications: Hungry Cities Papers

As awareness of the centrality of informality in urban development processes in the Global South is slowly incorporated into the international development agenda, a full understanding of the myriad ways in which informal economic activity is governed has become increasingly urgent. This discussion paper seeks to address this need through an analysis of informal economic…

There is some controversy on the applicability of the summand-based Household Food Security Assessment Score (HFIAS) and Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) as measures of food insecurity in urban areas in the Global South. These measures were primarily designed for measurement in rural communities where food insecurity itself was first identified and is still predominantly…

The interface between urbanization, gender and food in the Global South offers a vantage point from which to think through the integrated nature of contemporary development challenges from both the structural elements of urban poverty and the ways in which urban residents navigate their cities. The starting point of this paper is that there is…

Socioeconomic and structural changes in the global food system, driven by rapid urbanization in the Global South, shape the nature and scale of food safety problems as well as the strategies designed to cope with them. These changes create new challenges for ensuring food security, given that food safety is an essential dimension of food…

Small-scale food enterprises occupy a critical space in the food system of Kingston, Jamaica. While small-scale food retailers serve the entire population, they are disproportionately relied on by poor urban households. The nodes and networks of retailers play an important role in the value and commodity chain by providing access to comparatively cheap food but…

Policy responses to the growth of the informal food sector in African cities vary from benign neglect to active destruction. The eradication of street food vending is the dominant mode of governance. Alternative approaches that recognize the inevitability of informality and the role of the sector in making food accessible to the urban poor have…

Wet markets play an important role in urban food security in many Asian countries. Existing research pays more attention to the wet market food accessibility of urban residents and less on the business operations and profits of wet market vendors. Based on a survey of 1,119 small food enterprises in Nanjing, this study employs the…

Amidst a growing youth unemployment crisis spreading across Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a pressing need for effective policy intervention, based on sound research, to support young people’s entry into labour markets. As urban labour markets continue to catalyze the growth of national economies in the Global South, the inclusion of youth entrepreneurs in the food…

The role of the informal food sector in the urban food system cannot be appreciated or understood without the compilation and analysis of systematic and representative data on the activities of informal enterprises across a city and along food supply chains outside it. At present, there are significant gaps in the knowledge base about the…

In the Global South, the informal food economy is both a source of income for disadvantaged urban groups and an accessible source of food for consumers. Yet governance of this economy has commonly been restrictive in Southern countries including China. Consequently, in China there has been an antagonistic relationship between vendors and chengguan (China’s city…