Systemic Design for Food Self-Sufficiency in Urban Areas

Abstract

This article adopts a systemic approach to address the problem of the operationalization of relationships between actors conducive to food self-sufficiency in urban areas. Through the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA), the literature on urban agriculture was analyzed, detecting eight key trends and topic areas. This information was used to design a generic recursive organizational structure with the identification of the key roles and functions for management and governance in the multi-level and multi-stakeholder relationships of a sustainable urban self-sufficient food production system, inspired by the principles of complexity management and organizational cybernetics. Methodologically, this is the first application that combines the exploratory capability of SNA and the recursive structure of the Viable System Model (VSM) to propose applicable organizational structures in any urban area, suggesting a new route for the study and application of systemic thinking in the development of urban agriculture schemes. However, due to the conceptual nature of this work, this study opens a discussion on how we can rethink interactions to seek continuous adaptation in food self-sufficiency, provide tools that foster inclusion, and adapt to every context to support the relevant actors and academics in urban agriculture.