The Role of Urban Agriculture in Enhancing Urban Food System Sustainability and Resilience

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, cities around the world have gone through terrible ordeals. These include a lack of urban resilience in emergency response, food supply, institutional cooperation, economic support, etc. Meanwhile, many urban and global problems have been amplified by the pandemic's impacts on food security issues, the long-term sustainability of food systems, and so on. In response to the recovery agenda of the post-COVID 19 era, rebuilding urban resilience and sustainability through the pathways of sustainable urban food system development has great potential. It is evident that food supports the fundamental needs of people's health and well-being, but cities account for most food consumption, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions. Starting from these considerations, this study investigates how urban agriculture can improve the sustainability and resilience of the urban food system through the analysis of the existing literature. Conducted on April 11, 2022, on the Web of Science database, this literature review includes bibliographic coupling, co-citation analysis, and co-occurrence analysis to map knowledge regarding the role of urban agriculture practices in fostering both urban food systems' 'sustainability' and 'resilience'. The findings of the study highlight different aspects that include more general considerations, e.g., urban agriculture alone cannot substitute large-scale food systems in the short term, but it could be a promising approach in the future, and more detailed aspects, such as the geographical recurrence of this kind of research and the most popular scientific journals addressing these topics.