Between promise and practice: Exploring the politics of urban food strategies in European cities

Over the last decade, in cities and city‐regions around the world there has been a multiplication of ad hoc policies seeking for a transformation of the urban food systems. This thesis seek to understand the specific European phenomenon of urban food strategies (UFSs), which can be identified as a broad category of efforts by municipalities to improve food quality, access or distribution in order to pursue sustainability and the general wellbeing of the population. Presented alongside narratives of participation, social and environmental justice, active citizenship and the ‘greening’ of the food system, UFSs have been implicitly identified as an “alternative” to the “neoliberal” forces operating in the food system and urban governance. This thesis seeks to fill the knowledge gap surrounding UFSs’ definition, diffusion and content, as well as to illuminate these two labels in order to explore how “alternative” notions around food have been incorporated in institutional urban settings. Throughout the empirical cases of this thesis, the author inquire into discrepancies between what UFSs are believed to be in political and academic contexts and how they become manifest in contemporary urban settings.