Contact
Andrew Gallagher, Project Coordinator for SLU Urban Futures
Hub coordinator, Ultuna
The Unit for Collaboration and Development
andrew.gallagher@slu.se
+46(0)730 55 80 27
Urban foodscapes
Last changed: 06 June 2024
Foodscapes refers to the complex inter-relations and connections between people, place and food. The production and consumption of food shapes, and is shaped, by social, spatial and discursive processes that play out across space, and over time. These processes take place within and across territories populated by multiple human and non-human actors operating at different levels and scales. Studying Urban Foodscapes invites attention to these processes, and so doing, offers a lens on sustainable urban development issues.
On this page, SLU Urban Futures continuously shares the platform's work with urban foodscapes. While not exhaustive, it highlights our main initiatives and collaborations. If you would like more information or wish to join the conversation, please reach out to our hub coordinator. Contact details are available further down the page.
Status
The foodscapes discourse was first taken up at the Getting Our Cities Right conference #1, which lifted the interconnection between processes of urbanisation, urban planning and the food system. Whilst SLU has a strong research focus on aspects of food in the context of urban and peri-urban agriculture, rural development, and food systems and horticultural science, critical studies that reveal the political, social and cultural complexities facing urban food systems such as issues like food poverty, inequality and health and well-being, remain rather under-represented. The Ultuna Hub leads the Food&Cities project that works to bring attention to the diversity of research at SLU that contributes to shaping foodscape discourses. Additionally, work on the integrated food planning project, specifically, is shaping a new research field at SLU that takes a holistic approach to food systems that resonates with the wider focus of foodscapes discourses.
Progress
The Ultuna Hub has engaged with societal actors such as municipalities, local food systems actors, and Uppsala’s Food Policy Council, shaping dialogue on the connections between place, people and food. In particular, the three workshops exploring integrated food planning, demonstrate the very core of the foodscapes discourse. They reveal that local contextual factors relating to place and local food system characteristics shape different understandings, approaches to and outcomes of processes for sustainable foodscapes.
Next steps
Since many discourses pertain to the foodscapes concept, different research fields take varying approaches to its study and definition. The challenge for SLU Urban Futures is to map existing and upcoming initiatives and research projects at SLU and more broadly and continually update and adapt our understandings of foodscapes, placing an emphasis on the inter-relations with urban dimensions that are core to our work.