Governance and Actions for Resilient Urban Food Systems in the Era of COVID-19: Lessons and Challenges in China

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically challenged urban food systems, has hurt the resilience and fundamental function of urban food systems and also accelerated the trends of digitization and changing preferences of consumers in cities. This research conducted a qualitative analysis of the discourses, actions and interactions of different actors in the urban food systems in China during COVID-19 using an actor-oriented approach and discourse analysis. This research finds that stricter regulations and policies have been implemented by governments to regulate the food supply chain and ensure human health. Local community service personnel, volunteers, stakeholders along the food supply chain and consumers formulated collective actions during the pandemic yet chaos and discourse distortions also emerged at different stages. The pandemic is a preamble to changes in consumers’ preferences and food supply chains in urban communities. There were significant structural changes and a dual structure of urban and rural food systems, where unbalanced supply and demand existed. Collective actions with community governance and an innovative food business model to digitize flows and easily adapt to shocks in food systems are required.

Food system under COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai: problems and countermeasures

“…Urban systems also implemented various measures to address this challenge. Existing research explored the overall urban governance and resilience measures of urban systems in China during pandemics (Xue et al, 2023). Research also addressed the exploration of methods and frameworks for future urban emergency response based on existing development concepts and policies in cities (Blay-Palmer et al, 2021;Fei et al, 2023).…”

“…The study also identifies the systemic and structural deficiencies exposed by the city in light of these challenges and suggests improvements. However, collective behavior also exhibited confusion and discourse distortion at different stages of the pandemic (Xue et al, 2023), some response measures only focused on short-term crisis management and maintaining the status (López Cifuentes and Fiala, 2022). In response to these shortcomings, we propose the second research objective RO2: enumerate the response measures taken by governments and stakeholders in various stages of the pandemic in light of the main challenges and evaluate the sustainability of these measures.…”