Objectifs :
This module provides an overview of the various dimensions of food systems within urban contexts. The first week offers different entry points for considering the nature of urban food systems, starting by considering how food systems and urban systems intersect. Different actors, perspectives, scales, governance models will help frame urban food systems, and the importance of place and time considerations will be highlighted. The main components of urban food systems will finally be outlined, based on the principles of circularity.
The second week concentrates on one component of urban food systems: urban agriculture – and specifically, urban food production. This starts by framing urban agriculture in relation to urban-rural linkages, to livelihood principles, and to some key concepts. Building blocks for urban agriculture are presented next, followed by typologies of urban agriculture. The week will conclude by examining how urban agriculture can be organized and supported by different policies and instruments, including design and planning.
The final week analyses the connection between urban food security and urban food systems (including urban agriculture). Starting by reviewing the concept of food security, we will seek to answer the question: “what is urban about food security?” The temporal and spatial dimensions of urban food security are considered next. The final part will consider various issues as they relate to urban food security: identity and intersectionality, access to resources, health and environment, and crisis conditions.
Throughout the seminars during these three weeks, a number of concrete case studies will be provided to illustrate the main themes of that week. The examples may be from any part of the world, with the greatest number coming from Canada. In addition to each week’s seminars, a full day is reserved weekly for visits to projects located in Paris or nearby cities within the Ile de France. The global case studies within the seminars and the local case studies within the Paris region will ground the conceptual discussions.

Programme :
This module is offered over a three-week period in April 2025. Each week, one third of the module is covered in a block of twelve hours over three consecutive days. Students can ask permission from the instructors to attend only one or two blocks

Each block includes six hours of interactive seminars (each seminar lasting about an hour, combining lectures and exchanges) offered by the two instructors or guest speakers, as well as six hours of visits to projects in and around Paris. The following is a summary of the distribution of the 36 hours of teaching and visits in the module.
36 (3 weekly blocks of 12 hours). Students can ask permission from the instructors to attend only one or two blocks.
Tuesday 15 April PM: From food systems to urban food systems
Wednesday 16 April AM: Components of urban food systems
Wednesday 16 April PM: Field visits covering components of urban food systems
Thursday 17 April AM: Field visits covering components of urban food systems
Tuesday 22 April PM: Understanding urban agriculture
Wednesday 23 April AM: Organizing, supporting, planning and designing urban agriculture
Wednesday 23 April PM: Field visits focusing on urban agriculture
Thursday 24 April AM: Field visits focusing on urban agriculture
Monday 28 April PM: From food security to urban food security
Tuesday 29 April AM: Field visits showing the dimensions of urban food security
Tuesday 29 April PM: Field visits showing the dimensions of urban food security
Wednesday 30 April AM: Issues related to urban food security + Wrap-up

Pré-requis :
none (no need to be a specialist in urban agriculture)

Equipe pédagogique :
Agnès Fargue-Lelièvre is an engineer in agronomy of the INA P-G (now AgroParisTech) with a PhD in agronomy and both teacher and researcher at AgroParisTech since 2006. She now shares her time between teaching engineers of all 3 years at AgroParisTech (level Bachelor and Master of Science) and also Master of Science in agronomy and doctoral students. She also contributes to the formation of the apprentices of AgroParisTech. As for research, after working on the effects of cropping techniques on gene flow at the landscape level and on population dynamics, then on the adoption of innovations by farmers, she now works on the diversity of operations and managements of urban agriculture and its impact on its sustainability, mainly on the Paris region. She has been participating in European projects around urban agriculture and food systems since 2017 and is currently part of the FoodCityBoost project (2024-2027). She is also regularly contacted by farmers and local governments for her agronomic expertise in urban agriculture. Joe Nasr is an independent scholar, lecturer and consultant based in Toronto who has been exploring urban agriculture and food security issues for over three decades. He holds a 1997 doctorate in urban and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania. As associate of the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Toronto Metropolitan (formerly Ryerson) University (TMU), he co-curated the traveling exhibit, book and website Carrot City: Designing for Urban Agriculture (www.carrotcity.org), co-organized the growTO speakers’ series, helped initiate the Urban Farm at TMU, and coordinated the programming for the 2012 Urban Agriculture Summit in Toronto. Joe is co-founder and co-coordinator of Toronto Urban Growers (www.torontourbangrowers.org) since 2009, and a former member of the Toronto Food Policy Council (www.tfpc.to). He is co-author or co-editor of five books and dozens of articles, including the seminal book Urban Agriculture (www.jacsmit.com/book.html); his most recent book is the Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Sourcebook, published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cb9722en). He is also co-editor of an Urban Agriculture Book Series (www.springer.com/series/11815). Joe teaches regularly at TMU’s Chang School courses on urban agriculture and food security; he has taught at a number of universities and held several fellowships in multiple countries over the years.

Les Compétences et capacités visées à l'issue de la formation (fiches RNCP)

Arrêté du 22 février 2019 définissant les compétences des diplômés du doctorat et inscrivant le doctorat au répertoire national de la certification professionnelle. https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000038200990/

Bloc 4 : Veille scientifique et technologique à l’échelle internationale

- Acquérir, synthétiser et analyser les données et informations scientifiques et technologiques d’avant-garde à l’échelle internationale

- Dépasser les frontières des données et du savoir disponibles par croisement avec différents champs de la connaissance ou autres secteurs professionnels

- Disposer de la curiosité, de l’adaptabilité et de l’ouverture nécessaire pour se former et entretenir une culture générale de haut niveau

La formation participe à l'objectif suivant :conforter la culture scientifique des doctorants dans leur champ disciplinaire ou en interdisciplinaire