Urban food forestry networks and Urban Living Labs articulations

ABSTRACT

This article wrestles with the theoretical complexity of fostering food sustainability transitions in metropoles. It pays attention to how urban food forestry networks cultivated in parks may represent a critical part of these transitions, by providing a mechanism for urban peoples to reconnect with food processes while enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services. The work considers this crucial topic, both theoretically and empirically, in two steps. First, a brief overview of utopian models and the critical literature grounds the discussion of the proposed regenerative place-making model. Second, the work weaves considerations regarding a utopian model of urban food forestry network, by conceptualising Urban Living Labs (ULLs) as flexible nodes of articulation. The work concludes that the key to unlocking this model’s potential for replication and transplantation to distinct localities lies as much in the multiple values entailed by the proposed intervention as it does in its flexible nodes of articulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability transitions
• regenerative place-making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barbara Ribeiro

Dr Barbara Ribeiro (PhD in Sustainability Transitions), has published academic papers and technical reports about pathways to more sustainable futures. Her research agenda is influenced both by work experience at the Auckland Council’s Research and Monitoring Unit in 2019 (Chief Planning Office) and her secondment as a Senior Sustainability & Resilience Advisor to the Chief Sustainability Office in 2020.

Nick Lewis

Dr Nick Lewis is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Auckland, widely published in Neoliberalism and Food. His main research interest is in the making and governance of industries and food as spaces of governance in neoliberalism and contemporary “late”, “rolled out”, or “after” neoliberal political projects.