Feeding the Future’s Cities: Challenges in an Uncertain World

Many areas of the developing world are experiencing a massive inflow of people from rural areas into urban areas. In some countries, this is giving rise to “megacities,” cities with 10 million inhabitants or more. The growth of some of the megacities is not in response to economic opportunity (i.e., a surplus of jobs), rather, it is a matter of basic survival prospects and often results in people merely swapping rural poverty for urban poverty. One of the biggest challenges facing these megacities will be providing access to sufficient and nutritious food. We present a paper in response to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s topic of “Understanding complex food systems meeting urban food needs – methodological approaches and disciplinary contributions.” Specifically, we will (1) briefly examine the rise of megacities and compare and contrast some of the challenges facing them in developed and developing countries, (2) examine the connection between food systems and community resilience, (3) examine how external events such as climate change and political conflict can impact the food and community nexus, and (4) discuss approaches on how decision support tools can be used to assess the system issues associated with meeting food needs and how vulnerabilities in the food production and distribution networks can be assessed in order to support the food and community resilience cycle.