Creating a 'just and sustainable' food system in the City of Vancouver: The role of governance, partnerships and policy-making

Food systems, understood as the ways that people produce, obtain, consume and dispose of their food, have historically played an integrat part in processes of urbanisation. Over and above the role of nourishing populations, food and food systems have often come to symbolise a society's beliefs and struggles around ideals of social redistribution, justice, and democracy itself. Due tc~ a range of factors, the 20th century witnessed a deep rift between cities and their food systems. Now, after decades of estrangement, food and food systems are once again being conceptualised as an urban governance concern. This reconciliation is being felt in many Canadian cities where food is reappearing on the agenda of a growing number of local governments. Such a shift reflects changes in the ways that food, and other social and environmental dimensions of urban life are recognised and managed in local governance arrangements that are themselves undergoing transformations in their social, political and spatial composition. Based on an in-depth study of one Canadian city, Vancouver, this dissertation analyses the ways that food policy as a sustainability issue came to find a place on the local governance agenda; how, by whom and at what geographical scales ensuing tensions were mediated; and what food policy may reveal about the role of local government in coordinating governance strategies at different scales and contexts, particularly where 'sustainability' is involved. The pressures generated by Vancouver's adoption of food policy raise important geographical question~s that are central to this dissertation. Specifically, where and how do policies on sustainability develop, what groups and interests are involved in their formulation, and what are the resulting types of local policy and governance? The aim is not to determine a formula that assumes uniformity between and within places. Rather it is to consider why certain sustainability approaches are adopted in some places and not others, and why at particular times and not others. Underlying all clf these questions is the importance of the broader Canadian context characterised by active debate over the need for new governance arrangements and rinter-governmental relations that better reflect Canada's shifting realities.