Designing resilient urban food systems: what are the optimal policy instruments?

The resilience-enhancing potential of local level food systems is enjoying renewed focus, thanks to the important role played by such systems in the food policy response to the covid-19 pandemic, and a weak national policymaking approach to the need for transformation towards more healthy, sustainable, equitable, resilient food systems more broadly. The UK city of Birmingham is an example of a city where the need for change, and the potential for the urban setting to deliver it, has been clearly recognised and articulated, including in a forthcoming food strategy. However, delivering on its bold vision and ambitions requires identifying which mix of innovative policy instruments can catalyse transformation of a wide range of food chain activities, towards a number of goals, crossing multiple policy fields and actors. Instruments which, by their nature as part of a holistic and disruptive policy approach aimed at transformative change, must go beyond the relatively small and poorly-evidenced toolbox of food policy levers historically employed by local governments. This paper will share early findings from a process of food system mapping, solution scanning, intervention identification and selection criteria - developed by the interdisciplinary Mandala project, using Birmingham as its case study, through systems science-informed methods - to support urban level policy design and implementation and, ultimately, system transformation.