This project seeks to examine how the ruralisation of our urban areas – what we’re calling ‘rurbanisation’ – by increasing greening and food growing in urban areas could help tackle these challenges, by: increasing availability, access and preferences for fruit and vegetables; by alleviating pressures on land use and environment and enhancing urban ecosystems; and shortening supply chains.
Our food system is facing multiple major challenges: with a growing obesity crisis; inequality in access to nutritious food; a dwindling land resource for supporting farming; ecosystem degradation from agricultural land use change and practice; and questionable supply resilience in the face of political instability.