RGS-IBG 2017 – Call for Papers 

29^th August – 1^st September 2017 in London 

Rethinking justice in city regional food systems planning 

Sponsored by the Food Geographies Working Group, and the Geographies of Justice Research Group

Convenor: Richard J Nunes (University of Reading)

Please submit title, name and affiliation, and an abstract of no more than 250 words by 15^th February 2017 – [log in to unmask]

Session Abstract

What does it mean to do planning when we think about the creation of sustainable healthy city-regional food systems? In this session, we aim to explore this question from the perspective of urban food enterprise (UFE) and regional planning. UFEs are socially innovative business practices that seek alternative, local responses to conventional food systems, from inputs through to resource recovery and waste management. Yet the pluralism of UFE practices as an alternative to conventional food practices are far from coherent, making it conceptually difficult to align these organisations with apriori ideas of ‘justice’.

This challenge is compounded by the temptation to point to complex interconnections between food systems and other urban systems such (food) waste to energy at the city-regional level. Often the temptation is to identify the city-region or metropolitan area as a uniformly defined or coherent scale of governance, coupled with rational comprehensive visions of city-regional food systems as potential vehicles for food and health justice. However, such visions are riddled by pre-existing issues of social and environmental justice concerns that surround the uneven distribution of ecological assets (and their social returns), and the disproportionate environmental burdens among the economically disadvantaged in cities.

We seek papers that re-examine the idea of justice in this complex and evolutionary context.