HCP PAPERS
Urban Food Deserts in Nairobi and Mexico City
Recent conceptualizations of “food deserts” have expanded from a sole focus on access to supermarkets, to food retail outlets, to all household food sources. Each iteration of the urban food desert concept has associated food sourcing behaviour in relation to household poverty, food insecurity, and dietary diversity characteristics. While the term continues to evolve, there has been little empirical evidence…
Social Protection and Urban Food Systems
This discussion paper examines development implications for food and nutrition when cash transfer interventions intersect with food system changes, particularly in urban areas where food is predominantly accessed through the market. South Africa is used as a case study because of its advanced social protection system as well as the rapid food system changes it is experiencing that are similar…
Supermarkets and Informal Food Vendors in Windhoek, Namibia
Much of the literature on urban food systems has focused on the expansion of supermarkets and their ability to reach urban consumers. However, the current pace of urbanization and rising urban poverty have been accompanied by a major upsurge in informality and a growing role for the informal food sector. One of the persistent arguments in the literature on supermarkets…
The Climate Change-Food Security Nexus: Intergovernmental Frameworks and Hyper-Experimentation in Cities
In this discussion paper we detail the challenges of tackling the food security-climate change nexus in an era of hyper-experimentation in cities. We detail how the challenge of addressing food security and climate change at the international scale has opened the metaphorical door for urban experimentation, or interventions in the processes of city building at the local level taken by…
Achieving Urban Food Security through a Public-Private Hybrid Food Provisioning System: A Case Study of Nanjing, China
Private and public markets are two models of urban food retailing governance. This paper examines the public-private hybrid model of urban food provisioning system and its governance in Nanjing, China. Based on data from surveys, non-structured interviews, and bibliographical material analysis, we examine the public-private hybrid model and its linkages with urban food security. Our analysis shows that the public-private…
Food Vending and the Urban Informal Sector in Cape Town, South Africa
In South Africa, the informal food sector is either criminalized or ignored, despite the important role it plays in the economy in terms of employment, income generation, food distribution, and general livelihoods. This paper assesses the nature, operations, strategies, and challenges of the informal food sector in Cape Town. Data was collected through a survey of over 1,000 informal food…
Predictors of Household Food Insecurity in Maputo and Matola, Mozambique
The rapid growth of Maputo and Matola (neighbouring cities in Southern Mozambique) has dramatically changed each city’s demographic and food insecurity profile. Previous research in Maputo indicates that household access to infrastructure plays an important role in determining vulnerability to food insecurity. This paper investigates (a) whether this relationship is also true of Matola and (b) whether the demographic composition…
Urban Informal Food Deserts in Windhoek, Namibia
Informal settlements in rapidly-growing African cities are urban and peri-urban spaces with high rates of formal unemployment, poverty, poor health outcomes, limited service provision and chronic food insecurity. Traditional concepts of food deserts developed to describe North American and European cities do not accurately capture the realities of food inaccessibility in Africa’s urban informal food deserts. This paper focuses on…
Cross-Platform Food Shopping and Household Food Access in Nanjing, China
Modern urban food systems have evolved into international, multi-scalar and complex networks. The historical evolution of the food system in Nanjing, China, exemplifies this complexity. Nanjing’s food system has undergone successive waves of modernization, bringing changes in consumer food sourcing behaviour along with it. Using household survey data, this investigation assesses the cross-platform food sourcing behaviour of households in Nanjing…
Food Insecurity and Alternative Food Networks in Cities of the Global South
Using the concept of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), this discussion paper interrogates these networks and asks how they manifest in the context of food insecurity in cities of the global South. AFNs evident in Northern cities generally present a perspective of the food system that prioritises sustainability and a deep green and often local ethic, embodying aspirations of food system…
Gender Inequality, Poverty and Urban Household Food Security in Cape Town
This discussion paper aims to advance our understanding of the gendered nature of urban household food security and how it is shaped by the relationships between internal household gender dynamics and external social factors of gender- and race-based inequalities. The manifestation of the gender inequality-food security nexus at the household level is most evident in the different food-related roles and…
Revisiting Africa’s Supermarket Revolution
Africa is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate and food systems are undergoing rapid transformation. This transformation is being driven in part by a global supermarket revolution. However, the idea of an inexorable supermarket revolution on the continent has recently been contested. This paper examines the role of supermarkets in Namibia’s capital city Windhoek to test the applicability of the model….
Cheap Industrial Food and the Urban Margins
From the middle of the 20th century onwards, the productivity gains associated with high-input, high- yield monocultures and livestock operations have become increasingly central to global food security and to dynamics of urbanization across the global south. On one hand, competition has deflated prices and helped undermine the viability of small farm livelihoods in many places. On the other hand,…
The Food Security Implications of Gendered Access to Education and Employment in Maputo
The multiple linkages between gender and household food security in cities have been observed in diverse settings, at multiple scales, and through a variety of disciplinary lenses. The Hungry Cities Partnership is rooted in the importance of inclusive growth of cities, which includes a fundamental concern with gender-based injustices that reduce inclusivity, sustainability and food security by underpinning structural poverty….
The Impact of Proximity to Wet Markets and Supermarkets on Household Dietary Diversity in Nanjing City, China
Existing studies suggest that despite the proliferation of supermarkets, traditional wet markets have persisted in many countries and have been playing an important role in people’s daily food access. Yet, studies investigating the issue of food access and its influences on food security have mainly focused on food deserts and the proximity to supermarkets, with limited focus on wet markets…
The Growth of Food Banking in Cities of the Global South
As the number and size of food banks increase globally, it is critical to research how food banks fit into existing food systems and their role in reducing food insecurity and food waste. After examining the political ecology of urban food waste in food systems, this discussion paper examines the globalization of food banking and its growth in the Global…
Compounding Vulnerability: A Model of Urban Household Food Security
The efficiency of the infrastructure systems in cities will define the extent to which dystopic visions of urban futures become a reality. At the level of the individual household, vulnerability to hazards in cities is defined, in part, by the ability to access essential resources and services. This discussion paper proposes a model to help explain the relationship between access…
Urban Food Security, Rural Bias and the Global Development Agenda
This discussion paper sets out the global, African, and South African contexts within which both urban development and food security agendas in Africa are framed. It argues that the pervasive rural bias and anti-urbanism identified in the international and regional food security agendas in the first decade of the 21st century have persisted into the second. In examining whether the…
The Hungry Cities Food Purchases Matrix: A Measure of Urban Household Food Security and Food System Interactions
Recent theoretical work has suggested that urban food security is the result of food system interactions. This work highlights the challenge of assessing household-level food insecurity and relating it to the broader food system. One priority is to develop food security metrics that incorporate household inter-actions with the food system retail environment. The Hungry Cities Food Purchases Matrix (HCFPM) is…
Comparing Household Food Security in Cities of the Global South through a Gender Lens
Understanding the determinants of urban food insecurity requires sensitivity to local cultural contexts and taking into account a globally relevant framework for analysis. A gender lens is amenable to this kind of analysis because it is rooted in local configurations of households, livelihoods and consumption patterns, while also being animated by a longstanding global effort to create a world in…
International Migration and Urban Food Security in South African Cities
The drivers of food insecurity in rapidly growing urban areas of the Global South are receiving more research and policy attention, but the precise connections between urbanization, urban food security and migration are still largely unexplored. In particular, the levels and causes of food insecurity amongst new migrants to the city have received little consideration. This is in marked contrast…
Household Food Security and Access to Medical Care in Maputo, Mozambique
The relationship between household access to medical care and food security is a potentially circuitous and challenging relationship to model. This discussion paper uses multiple modelling techniques to determine the quality of the relationships between these variables using household survey data collected by the Hungry Cities Partnership in 2014 in Maputo, Mozambique. The results of the investigation are framed according…
The Informal Sector’s Role in Food Security: A Missing Link in Policy Debates
This discussion paper aims to review what is currently known about the role played by the informal sector in general, and informal retailers in particular, in the accessibility of food in South Africa. The review seeks to identify policy-relevant research gaps. Drawing on Statistics South Africa data, we show that the informal sector is an important source of employment, dominated…
Mapping the Informal Food Economy in Cape Town, South Africa
The informal food retail sector is an important component of urban food systems and plays a vital role in ensuring access to food by the urban poor. Yet, policy frameworks both to address food security and to govern the informal sector neglect informal retail in the food system and, as a result, the sector is poorly understood. This discussion paper…
Supermarkets, Wet Markets and Food Patronage in Nanjing, China
Although supermarkets have become a dominant food outlet for urban residents in developed countries, studies of food purchasing in developing countries such as China report a persistence of traditional food outlets, despite a proliferation of supermarkets over the past two decades. Yet, little is known about urban residents’ use of various food sources in the Chinese context. Building on the…
Urban Food Deserts and Climate Change in African Cities
The underlying assumption in much of the Euro-American food deserts literature is that urban food deserts are dynamic spaces, expanding and contracting with the advent and withdrawal of supermarkets. This discussion paper argues that to tie such dynamism purely to the spatial behaviour of formal food retail outlets is both narrow and inappropriate in the African context, where the use…
Approaching Sustainable Urban Development in China through a Food System Planning Lens
After more than two decades of rapid urbanization, Chinese cities now face severe sustainability chal- lenges in terms of balancing economic viability, social justice, and environmental protection goals. While various types of planning have long been adopted to cope with these challenges, food as a centrepiece of daily life and of social and economic activity in cities has rarely been…
Hungry Cities of the Global South
The recent inclusion of an urban Sustainable Development Goal in the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda represents an important acknowledgement of the reality of global urbanization and the many social, economic, infrastructural and political challenges posed by the human transition to a predomi- nantly urban world. However, while the SDG provides goals for housing, transportation, land use, cultural heritage and disaster…
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