Context. Urban food policies (UFPs) have become important for modern cities as a strategic tool to enhance public health, promote social inclusion, advance sustainability, and strengthen resilience. Yet, despite their growing importance, and their wide adoption by many cities worldwide, many urban food initiatives rely heavily on short-term or project-based funding. This explicit dependence raises critical concerns since it undermines their contribution to urban sustainability and equity transformations and their institutional existence. Recognising financing as a critical, yet underexplored, dimension of urban food governance, this study examines how cities can secure sustainable, resilient funding for UFPs over time exploring works of literature on urban governance, public finance, and food systems transformation to investigate sustainable funding approaches for UFPs.
Data and methodology. This study implements a comparative qualitative case study methodology, focusing on five diverse cities with established urban food strategies: Milan, Toronto, Paris, Barcelona, and Belo Horizonte. Each city is unique (i.e., in political, economic, and socio-cultural contexts) in the typology of the problematics that it faces, offering different insights into the challenges and solutions associated with financing UFPs over time. Data sources include city policy documents, budget reports, and secondary literature. The analysis follows a qualitative comparative case study approach. Each case was systematically reviewed to identify the sources of funding, financial mechanisms used, and strategies for integrating food policy initiatives into durable urban budgets. A typology of financing models was developed inductively through thematic analysis across cases. The study further extracted enabling factors and strategic principles that appear consistently across successful long-term funding examples. The main research question, the article aims to answer is: RQ1:” How can cities finance urban food policies sustainably over the long term?” followed by RQ1a: “How are urban food policies currently financed across different global cities?” and RQ1b: “What mechanisms and strategies enable the transition from short-term, project-based funding to sustainable, institutionalised financial models?”
Results. The research identifies four main types of financing models: (i) integration into existing municipal departmental budgets (e.g., health, environment, education departments), (ii) creation of dedicated food policy offices with their line-item funding, (iii) leveraging external partnerships and co-funding with philanthropy, private actors, or higher levels of government, (iv) innovative fiscal tools, such as earmarked taxes or community wealth-building initiatives. The key strategic principles for durable financing observed are: (i) early integration of food goals into broader municipal strategies (e.g., climate, health, social inclusion); (ii) building strong cross-sectoral coalitions to advocate for budgetary commitments, (iii) demonstrating the multi-dimensional benefits (economic, social, environmental) of food policy to justify continued public investment, (iv) developing adaptive governance mechanisms that align food policy goals with evolving political and economic contexts.
The findings emphasise that financial sustainability is not only a technical issue but deeply political, requiring persistent coalition-building, strategic framing, and institutional innovation.
Policy implications. The study offers practical insights for cities aiming to insert food policies into permanent governance structures from early budgetary planning for food initiatives to cross-sectoral alliances between food, health, and sustainability departments, and innovative fiscal tools, considering a food justice framing. By securing stable and predictable funding streams, cities can move from pilot programs toward transformative, systemic interventions that advance both urban sustainability and food justice
