Planning for Food Systems in Urban Settlements: Learning from Urban North America

The New Urban Agenda addresses the need for prioritizing food security and nutrition in urban and territorial planning. While this can be considered as an important step towards improving food security and nutrition in urban areas, the challenge ahead is how those ideas can get implemented. It is expected that governments, especially at local and regional levels, will need support on directions for implementation. FAO, in collaboration with the Bartlett Development Planning Unit of the University College London, is developing the book “Integrating food into urban planning”, based on the evidence from over 20 city-based experiences from across the global North and South. A chapter of this publication overviews lessons from the United States of America, particularly on the major advances that have occurred since early 2000s in planning for food systems in urban areas. This side event organized jointly by FAO and the University of Buffalo, The State University of New York will be a training session that will provide information and tools on how the planning systems is mainstreaming food systems into Urban North America. The event will provide lessons for future FAO activities on "implementing food systems in the New Urban Agenda” that will focus on food systems planning for the Urban South.