ABSTRACT
As cities are beginning to see food as an urban system and part of the solution to a wide range of complex urban problems – from hunger and poverty to climate resiliency, public health, and waste management – a demand for new institutional spaces that could support the development and implementation of comprehensive urban food system projects, policies, and strategies has begun to manifest. While urban networks for an alternative food system governance started forming more than two decades ago through the work of nongovernmental groups, which in North America led to the development of the first food policy councils in the 1980s-1990s, their exponential diffusion during the past 10 years has not had a parallel within government structures yet. This is greatly due to the lack of a formal mandate for urban food policy in the public domain, but also to the insufficient clarity about the kind of institutional arrangements that are best suited to integrate this novel area of competency in existing government structures.
