ABSTRACT
If food planning continues to solidify as a planning sub-discipline, it may prove a useful prism through which to explore and influence the processes that govern landuse and human health.
– Catherine Brinkley, Avenues into Food Planning
The credibility of urban food planning as a necessary practice in the public domain largely depends on its ability to convey the importance of its object of study and the problems it addresses. The development of a robust toolbox of analytical tools that can enable the generation, accumulation, and exchange of agrifood system knowledge tailored specifically to the needs of urban professionals, activists, and policymakers is an essential step to this end. This chapter explores some of the different “lenses” researchers are developing to uncover missing, emergent, and potential geographies of urban food procurement – from food retail to city and regional farming – and assess their impact on human and environmental wellbeing. The analytical tools considered vary from specialized to comprehensive and encompass both expert and community-based approaches of inquiry. The last part of the chapter provides an overview of some of the metrics and indicators that local administrations have hitherto developed to link specific food system features to sustainable food system goals and objectives and measure progress toward their implementation.
