Cities in the loop: a social science perspective on the role of cities in food system circularity

There is broad scientific consensus that provisioning of food within ecological boundaries is among humanity’s most important challenges (e.g., Willett et al., 2019; Rockström et al., 2020; Creutzig et al., 2022). With technological innovations, specialization, and globalization, human consumption has become increasingly detached from natural nutrient cycles and seasons of food provisioning, while experiencing year-round availability of and access to fresh and processed foods for a growing and urbanizing world population. This detachment is especially visible in cities, which take a central role in shaping global food networks from a consumption perspective (Solecki et al., 2018, Fattibene et al., 2020). Yet, cities produce only a limited amount of food (e.g., Langemeyer et al., 2021), making them reliant on inputs of resources and provisioning services from regional and global hinterlands. This dependency heightens urban vulnerability to socio-political disruptions and amplifies shocks related to impacts of climate change and other disruptions for example due to natural disasters, pandemics, or violent conflicts both at the urban level and elsewhere (FAO, 2023, Ihle et al., 2020, Polman et al., 2023). These dynamics underline the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the potential role of cities in a more sustainable food system.

To address food system issues, and the vulnerability of cities to food-system disruptions, circular economy approaches provide a promising outlook (Koppelmäki et al., 2021). Circular economy approaches aim at reducing virgin resource extraction and emissions to the environment by closing loops of materials and nutrients among food producing and consuming activities (Van Zanten et al., 2019). From an urban consumption perspective, changing dietary patterns towards more plant based foods potentially reduces global resource use and related soil nutrient disturbances, while circular economic relations in city-region food systems can save energy and reduce GHG emissions and pollution in regional food provisioning networks. As such, food system circularity has been associated with decreasing food insecurity (e.g., Lever and Sonnino, 2022), food system resilience (e.g., Sgroi, 2022), and the adoption of more sustainable practices, such as food sharing and reducing waste in urban contexts (e.g., Schröder et al., 2019). Examples in this regard include reusing out of date retail foods through food banks, using secondary processing flows as animal feed, composting food waste and converting organic materials into bioenergy, among others.

Transitioning toward more circular food systems requires a systemic change away from linear take-make-dispose structures and practices in the food system, which necessitates involving all actors and institutions in the food value web across multiple geographical scales (Koppelmäki et al., 2021). Cities, as central nodes in global food networks with their concentration of citizens, businesses, and institutional influence (Glaeser et al., 2016, Fratini et al., 2019), have the capacity to drive transitions toward more circular and sustainable systems (Wensing et al., 2023). As leverage points in this transition, cities can actively shape interactions within food networks by connecting citizens, civil society, private entities, and local governments to foster coordinated action (Moragues-Faus and Morgan, 2015, Lázaro et al., n.d.).

We can already see that cities and city networks have started initiatives to adopt circular economy principles, such as the city doughnut in Amsterdam, or Copenhagen’s circular economy strategy (Khmara and Kronenberg, 2023). With regard to food system transformation, we also observe a trend where cities are increasingly engaged in promoting sustainable local food systems, for example through the development of urban food strategies, and other policy and governance innovations (e.g., Polman and Bazzan, 2023). Moreover, cities have increasingly become at the focal point of international research projects as their high resource consumption makes them critical for circular economy strategies.^1,2

When looking at the focus of the literature on food circularity, however, we see that most studies approach this transition primarily from technical and/or environmental perspectives (Korhonen et al., 2018). For example, scholars often explore nutrient flows (e.g., Koppelmäki et al., 2021), agricultural applications (e.g., Barros et al., 2020), or digital tools (e.g., Freeman et al., 2022), focusing on specific resource streams or detailed case studies. Inherently social aspects of circularity transitions such as impact on daily lives (e.g., differences in consumption choices, or waste-collection procedures) and political decision-making processes (e.g., breaking with dominant interests) are underexposed, or even neglected (Kruse and Wedemeier, 2023). As a result, city governments more and more see the urgency of sustainable food systems in general, but not the City’s potential impact, nor the way the municipality could contribute.

Moreover, current approaches to circular food systems tend to overlook the potential role of cities in changing food system governance, economic aspects and the everyday social practices (e.g., Hobson, 2020). Also the organizational and spatial factors of cities which enable them to act as key drivers of circularity transitions have been largely overlooked (e.g., Murphy, 2015; Binz et al., 2020). Similarly, studies on urban food system governance often oriented at local innovative arrangements such as food policy councils and localized innovations (e.g., Zerbian, de Luis Romero, 2023; Papangelou et al., 2020) do not fully address the broader social implications and role of cities in the shift from linear to circular food systems. For example, circular food supply networks in city-regions call for place-based policies and effective governance arrangements that promote trust and coordination among local actors (Bourdin and Torre, 2025).

Other social science research that explores steps toward more food system circularity such as the shift from meat to plant-based diets (De Boer and Aiking, 2018) and circular business models (Dagevos, Lauwere., 2021) indicate structural lock-ins, different (and hence, unclear) interpretations and varied ambitions with respect to circular food and farm systems. The limitations of a supply side focus on food system circularity risks perpetuating existing power structures and trade offs between people, capital, and space, potentially reinforcing patterns of ecological degradation and social inequalities (Béné et al., 2019).

In this paper, our starting point is that transitioning towards a regenerative circular food system means to transition towards closed agricultural and food production cycles of superfluous input and output materials, with processing by-products being shared, residual waste minimized and valorized, and human capital not exploited (Wensing et al., 2023). However, in cities, most nutrients leave the urban system through the sewer via our metabolism (Baccini and Brunner, 2023). So, a fully circular food system can only be reached by closing the loop between regenerative agricultural production, food demand and bio-based waste of cities, including nutrients in the sewage systems, at multiple spatial scales.

With a growing majority of people living in cities, we argue that food system circularity cannot be addressed without taking cities in the food loop, both from an economic, societal and transformative perspective. An urban perspective on food system circularity requires a broader social science perspective, including social practices, governance arrangements and institutions, and economic power relations, to assess and reduce social inequalities and patterns of environmental degradation, also from a consumption perspective. The research question guiding such broader social science explorations is how cities can become a transformative force towards food system circularity and to what extent this contributes to equity, resilience and sustainability in urban food networks.

In the upcoming sections we explore the role of cities in the transformation towards food system circularity, both from an economic, governance, and behavioral perspective. First, we explore how a systems perspective can help to understand the interactions between institutions, actors, places, and resource systems that must be considered in food system transitions from an urban perspective. Next, we explore circularity as a design principle for economic arrangements and (spatial) interactions from an urban perspective, after which we turn to the role of governance as institutional (and political) barriers and enablers of economic interactions and outcomes. We then examine the implications of urban food system circularity for daily practices and how changes in practices towards circularity can support urban resilience. Finally, we conclude with considerations for future social science research on the role of cities in a transition toward more circular food systems.

source:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175778022500068X