• Urban issues

Urban issues

This guide describes the principal activities of food supply and distribution systems (FSDSs) and suggests planning criteria for managing the physical and spatial dimensions of a city in order to improve the quantity, quality, variety and safety of food, and to help low-income urban populations to access it.

The aim is to provide general guidelines that planners can adapt to the local situation and translate into concrete action. The guide defines the role of planners, gives guidelines for intervention in rural, metropolitan, urban and local settings. Examples and data are taken from various cities in developing countries and deal with monitoring and evaluation indicators for the different kinds of intervention.

Some of the many recommendations for planners are to:

• ensure that their goals are in keeping with the priorities of central and local government paying careful attention to the short-, medium- and long-term aims
• understand the structure, dynamics and performance of FSDSs in their own cities; be informed about the cultural, ethnic, social, geographic and regulatory aspects; and identify their impact on public health and the environment
• protect the land resource, balancing the need for land for cultivation against the demands of urbanisation (e.g. by promoting green belts)
• create conditions for the production of sufficient quantities of food at the lowest possible cost for the city and under the most hygienic conditions.

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