Urban food policies in the making

Urban Food Policy is an emerging field within research and practice, supported by initiatives such as the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, which, since its beginning in 2015, has been signed by 211 cities and aims to develop sustainable food systems. Urban Food Policies engage with new socio-ecological transformations entering long lasting agrifood networks. Urban actors from a variety of settings and organisations are getting involved in establishing new food systems - be they market, policy, governance or value oriented. However, many cities struggle with questions of how to involve such multistakeholder groups: which participatory methods to use and how to integrate their often inconsistent perspectives in an overall, holistic food policy. The measures the cities apply to food and meal policies, cover a range of focus points, from holistic aims integrating climate policies, sustainability policies and health and nutrition policies, to more narrow/focused policies targeting school garden and school food initiatives. This paper will present the preliminary findings from the European H2020 project Food Trails and the initial mappings of the food strategies and policies in a selected part of the 11 participating cities.