Crisis? What Crisis? The Normality of the Current Food Crisis

The 2005–8 food crisis was a shock to political elites, but in some respects the situation was normal. Food policies are failing to respond adequately to the squeeze on land, people, health and environment. Strong evidence of systems failure and stress, termed here New Fundamentals, ought to reframe twenty-first century food politics and effort. Yet so far, international discourse is too often narrow and technical. The paper suggests that 2005–8 reinforced how the dominant twentieth century productionist policy paradigm is running out of steam. This assumed that producing more food would resolve social problems. Yet distortions in markets, access and culture remain. At national and international levels of governance, despite realization of the enormity of the challenge ahead, there is still a belief in slow incremental change

Green Urbanism and its Application to Singapore

Green urbanism has been applied to cities but not in Asia. Seven characteristics of green urbanism are outlined and then applied to Singapore. The Renewable City is not yet a concept for Singapore. The Carbon Neutral City is being developed for an island Palau Ubin and by some firms but not to significant sectors or parts of urban Singapore. The Distributed City is being developed around Singapore’s polycentric model but needs specific infrastructure plans similar to ones developed by Singapore for Tianjin Eco-City. The Biophillic City is being developed as a world first through its Skyrise Greenery initiative and urban landscaping. The Eco-Efficient City is also being demonstrated through Singapore closing the loop on their water and solid waste systems. The Place Based City is very evident in all its 22 sub centres. And the Sustainable Transport City is an Asian leader in integrated transport planning though there are signs of this becoming harder to achieve

Feeding Sydney : assessing the importance of the city’s peri-urban farms

Peri-urban agriculture is common to cities worldwide. Large cities depend on the availability of fresh foodstuffs and traditionally these have been supplied competitively by small scale farmers located on the fringes of cities. A peri-urban location gives access to urban markets as well as the opportunity to tap into urban water infrastructure and temporarily idle land. These opportunities mean, however, that peri-urban farmers are displaced by urban expansion. This chapter examines these dynamics through a case study of peri-urban agriculture in Sydney, Australia. The chapter combines four recent studies by the authors to give an appraisal of the relative importance of Sydney basin farmers to the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables to Sydney’s 4.3 million residents. The study finds there is much uncertainty over the future of these farmers