Call for Abstracts

With urbanization, the cultural landscape of major European cities has been upturned, with increasing diversity in ethnic backgrounds and ethnic minorities collectively comprising the majority of the population. In such super-diverse so-called ‘majority-minority’ cities, many culturally-diverse food consumption practices take place. This diversity in food consumption practices is extremely relevant when we talk about regional food systems. Regional food systems strongly encourage the replacement of global food models for alternative, regional food networks. This begs the question: how can regional/local food production (and processing) adequately address culturally-diverse tastes and preferences and socio-cultural identities? This theme calls for thinking about the relationship between food consumption practices of ethnic minority groups and local/regional food systems. Do ethnic minority groups have access to local/regional food? Are they interested in such food? How ‘appropriate’ is local food and how can it match the needs of socio-culturally diverse populations better? How can access to local/regional food be improved among ethnic minority groups? What are the meanings and understandings around access to local/regional food among different food cultures? Can local food serve as a vehicle for social integration and place-making? These are some of the questions we hope to discuss within this theme.

For many centuries, peri-urban agriculture was strongly interrelated with urban food provision, and its production capacity largely determined the expansion capacity of the city. Today, there is hardly an interrelation between the city and its regional food producers. However, many cities, led by harbingers like the signatories of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, increasingly re-consider their hinterland as a potential supplier of local food. Various city governments, such as for example Almere, promote regional production to provide considerable shares of the food needed to feed the city while at the same time their agricultural hinterlands remain predominantly oriented towards global food markets. This tension exemplifies (the debate of) planning for and supportive governance in local and regional food provision. How to plan and develop policies that are supportive in re-bridging cities and their hinterlands? What alternative planning approaches can support the transformation to agroecological urbanism? What is the actual and potential contribution of alternative food networks (including those based in urban and peri-urban agriculture) to the transition into sustainable, healthy, and socially inclusive urbanism? And to what extent can such networks feed a city in healthy, sustainable, and socially inclusive ways? How can cities enable local producers to access local and diverse markets?

In case you aim to submit a contribution that does not match the other tracks and which you deem relevant for the scope of the conference theme, we welcome this as part of a separate track. After receiving abstracts the conference organization will thematically group these open contributions.