Blog Archives

North American Food Sector, Part One: Program Scan and Literature Review

The first part of a three-part publication, this resource provides an overview of food sector research and practices in cities across North America. The resource assembles a body of research that cities can use to inform decision-making about where to invest in innovative ventures in the food sector to realize the greatest economic development benefits, particularly through job creation, and how they can enhance community access to healthy food.

Enhancing Urban Food Systems (PAS Essential Info Packet, EIP-16)

This Essential PAS Info Packet addresses the interrelationships between food, land use, transportation, economic development, and public health. It is a compilation of resources on planning for the food system and also includes innovative local policies and regulations from communities on the cutting edge of food systems planning. Issues include: providing information on how planners can ensure adequate and equitable access to healthy food; what role urban agriculture can play in food security; how local food helps the economy; and what planners can do to help create more sustainable food systems.

Avoiding the Local Trap: Scale and Food Systems in Planning Research

This article encourages food systems advocates to move away from the misguided notion that local food systems are superior to larger scale food systems. The article asserts that outcomes such as sustainability or justice are a result of the actions of stakeholders and the content of agendas and not the scale of the food system itself. The authors apply scale theory as adopted from the realm of geography as a justification for their argument.

A Planners Guide to Community and Regional Food Planning: Transforming Food Environments, Facilitating Healthy Eating

Drawing lessons from six case studies of communities nationwide, this classic report published by the American Planning Association outlines strategies that planners can adopt to facilitate healthy eating through community and regional food planning. This report summarizes specific points of intervention for planners and shows how planners can play a significant role in shaping the food environment of communities, and thereby facilitate healthy eating.

Building a Common Table: The Role for Planning in Community Food Systems

This article analyzes the various tensions and complementarities of the global industrialized food system and the alternative food system from the perspectives of the stakeholders involved. The author illustrates how food systems planning practitioners and academics can bridge tensions and develop a common discourse using tools like stakeholder analysis, community food assessment, and alternative dispute resolution.

Recipes for Change: Healthy Food in Every Community

This report outlines organizational practices and public policies to expand access to healthy foods in support of healthy eating and better overall health. Information included in this report is based on key informant interviews with practitioners and advocates working on various aspects of the food system, augmented through scans of major policy and research reports. The report is part of a larger effort to identify high-impact approaches that will help achieve the vision of healthy people in healthy places. Key audiences for this report include community leaders, funders, practitioners, and advocates interested in an overarching strategy to promote healthy eating and active living.

Food Systems Planning Quicknotes

This briefing paper discusses how planners can become involved in planning for food production, processing, and distribution, while also improving access to healthy foods. A good resource to share with upper management, elected officials, and interested stakeholders to provide a succinct overview of the topic and the opportunities and challenges it brings.

The Food System: A Stranger to the Planning Field

This article, widely regarded as a seminal piece of food systems literature and research, helped spark conversations about food within the planning field at the turn of the twenty-first century. After a comprehensive examination of planning literature and a survey of planning agencies, the researchers concluded that the food system was largely ignored by the planning community. As a result, this article helped lay the foundations for planning intervention on the grounds of food as a basic necessity and as a component of interconnected community systems.