Environmental Resilience Food and the City—Zimbabwe

This book discusses the production, distribution, regulatory and management frameworks that affect food in urban settings. It plugs a gap in knowledge especially in the sub-Saharan Africa region where food, despite its critical importance, has been ignored as a ‘determinant of success’ in the planning and management of cities and towns. The various chapters in the book demonstrate how urban populations in Zimbabwe and elsewhere have often devised ways to produce own food to supplement on their incomes. Food is produced largely by way of urban agriculture or imported from the countryside and sold in both formal and informal stores and stalls. The book shows how in spite of the important space food occupies in the lives of all city residents, the planning and regulatory framework does not facilitate the better performance of food systems.

Environmental resilience – Food and the city.-City food in Zimbabwe: The origins and evolution.- Urban food: An examination of the policy and legislative framework.-Food processing, handling and marketing in Zimbabwe.- Urban food markets and the resilience factor in Zimbabwe.- Food wastein urban Zimbabwe: Options for food recycling.- Food availability, preferences and consumption in Zimbabwean urban spaces.- Food and city planning management in Zimbabwe.- Zimbabwean urban planners and their role in urban food.- Training institutions and food in the curriculum.- The teaching of home economics in primary schools in Zimbabwe.- Informal food spaces: Implications for public health.- The future of food, the city and environment: Case for resilience in Zimbabwe.

Innocent Chirisa is a professor in the Department of Demography Settlement and Development, University of Zimbabwe. He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Zimbabwe and a Research Fellow in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of the Free State,South Africa.