Promoting food security began as a twentieth-century global imperative. Promoting urban food security in particular is a twenty-first-century global imperative. The concept of food security encompasses three components: availability (supply of food), access (ability to secure food, based in part on the price of food), and utilization (the nutritional quality of food). Urban food security includes the same concepts but overlays a second analytical dimension: the socio-economic and spatial characteristics of cities. As a result, it stands as an identifiable, specialized domain within food security studies and practice. It tends to focus especially on issues of access and utilization but, as will be seen later, the field must also consider availability. Figure 1 illustrates many of the concerns associated with the field of urban food security.
Publication year
2011
Authors
Language
English
Keywords
agriculture, cities, food security, food supply
