Publications: Hungry Cities Reports

HCP Report No. 13: The State of Household Food Security in Mexico City, Mexico

Guénola Capron, Salomón Gonzalez Arellano, Jeremy Wagner and Cameron McCordic

About one in every four households in Mexico City are severely food insecure, while another quarter are mildly or moderately food insecure. Overall, food insecurity in Mexico’s capital is not a problem of food scarcity or shortage but rather of constrained access to a diverse range of foods. These are among the major findings of…

HCP Report No. 12: The State of Household Food Security in Cape Town, South Africa

Jonathan Crush, Mary Caesar and Gareth Haysom

This is the first city-wide representative household food security survey of Cape Town and contributes significantly to the growing body of evidence about the food system of the city. This enquiry into the food system has laid bare the deep inequalities in food security across different income groups in Cape Town. For the poor, poverty…

HCP Report No. 11: The State of Household Food Security in Nairobi, Kenya

Samuel Owuor

This report presents the results of a city-wide household food security survey of 1,434 Nairobi households, conducted by the Hungry Cities Partnership and the University of Nairobi. Among the key findings was that 70% of households in Kenya’s capital experience food insecurity, with one-quarter severely food insecure. As the first city-wide survey of household food…

HCP Report No. 10: The State of Household Food Security in Maputo, Mozambique

Inês Raimundo, Cameron McCordic and Abel Chikanda

The Hungry Cities Partnership aims to promote inclusive growth in urban food systems in Maputo and other cities of the Global South. The production of new empirical knowledge about the levels of household food security and the various facets of the urban food system is a core component of this effort. This report presents and…

HCP Report No. 9: The State of Household Food Security in Nanjing, China

Zhenzhong Si and Taiyang Zhong

This report on the state of food security in Nanjing, China, is based on a 2015 city-wide survey conducted by Nanjing University and the Hungry Cities Partnership. The research found that most of the city’s residents are food secure, with access to desirable foods and high dietary diversity throughout the year. Nanjing has a high…

HCP Report No. 8: The Urban Food System of Windhoek, Namibia

Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe, Jonathan Crush and Jeremy Wagner

The surprisingly high rate of supermarket patronage in low-income areas of Windhoek, Namibia’s capital and largest city, is at odds with conventional wisdom that supermarkets in African cities are primarily patronized by middle and high-income residents and therefore target their neighbourhoods. What is happening in Namibia and other Southern African countries that make supermarkets so…

HCP Report No. 7: The Urban Food System of Mexico City, Mexico

Guénola Capron, Salomón Gonzalez Arellano, Jill Wigle, Ana Luisa Diez, Anavel Monterrubio, Héctor Hidalgo, Jesús Morales, José Castro, Ma. Cristina Sánchez-Mejorada, María Concepción Huarte T., María Teresa Esquivel, René Flores

This report provides an overview of Greater Mexico City and its food system. The city’s history, demographic characteristics, geography and economy are first discussed. The city’s urban food system and urban food security are then examined with a particular focus on formal and informal food retail, food expenditure patterns, and policies to combat hunger and…

HCP Report No. 6: The Urban Food System of Nairobi, Kenya

Samuel Owuor, Andrea Brown, Jonathan Crush, Bruce Frayne and Jeremy Wagner

Nairobi is a city of stark contrasts. Nearly half a million of its three million residents live in abject poverty in some of Africa’s largest slums, yet the Kenyan capital is also an international and regional hub. In East Africa, rapid urbanization is stretching existing food and agriculture systems as growing cities struggle to provide…

HCP Report No. 5: The Urban Food System of Bangalore, India

Aditi Surie & Neha Sami

Bangalore (officially Bangaluru) is one of India’s fastest-growing cities. It is now the fifth-largest urban agglomeration in India, and the capital and primate city of the state of Karnataka in terms of area, population and economic output. With no natural features restricting its development, Bangalore’s spatial growth patterns are characterized by urban sprawl. Although it…

HCP Report No. 4: The Urban Food System of Kingston, Jamaica

Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Robert Kinlocke, Therese Ferguson, Charmaine Heslop-Thomas and Beth Timmers

Kingston is a colonial city and, like the country of Jamaica more generally, was the product of early mercantilism moulded by colonialism, sugar plantations and slavery. As Jamaica’s capital, Kingston is an economic and administrative hub with a social geography marked by many of the characteristic fissures of emerging cities in transition economies. Its population…