LET'S CREATE SUSTAINABLE urban food environments.

To provide healthy, sustainable, affordable + attractive food to all people.

Everyone should be able to fill the plate with nutritious, safe, sustainable and affordable food. However, Europe’s urban areas face challenges to ensure availability of healthy, sustainably produced food for all inhabitants and especially for people facing systemic barriers. Promising initiatives taken by municipalities to change the architecture of food choice often fail to become embedded in the wider policy context and to reach food-deprived and vulnerable groups.

FoodCLIC brings together actors from politics, science and civil society to support the development of integrated urban food policies - i.e. policies that facilitate the accessibility and availability of healthy and sustainably produced food for all people and in particular for vulnerable communities. Given the interconnectedness of food concerns with other (policy) sectors, FoodCLIC wants to ensure that urban planning always incorporates food considerations.

FoodCLIC is a four-year EU-funded project that runs from September 2022 to February 2027.

TAKING ACTION IN 8 CITY-REGIONS.

The EU-funded project supports the creation of sustainable urban food environments in eight city-regions, consisting of an urban centre and its surrounding rural (agriculturally used) area. These city-regions share the ambition of a food system transformation that is brought forward through the improvement of their urban food environments (and the interrelated urban food systems).

FoodCLIC wants to ensure that all inhabitants have access to affordable, healthy and sustainably sourced food.

image/svg+xmlGERMANYNETHERLANDSITALYSPAINPORTUGALDENMARKHUNGARYROMANIAAARHUSAarhus UniversityAarhus MunicipalityAMSTERDAMCity of AmsterdamFood Connect Foundation(Stichting Voedsel Verbindt)Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Stichting VU)BARCELONAMetropolitan Area of BarcelonaIrsiCaixa AIDS Research InstituteBERLINHumboldt University of BerlinBerlin Food Policy CouncilBRASOVCity of BrasovTransilvania University of BrasovBUDAPESTMunicipality of BudapestESSRG Nonprofit KFTLISBONInstitute of Social Sciences, University of LisbonLisbon School of Medicine, University of LisbonMunicipal Environmental Government Agency of Cascais (EMAC)LUCCAMunicipality of CapannoriUniversity of PisaSUPPORTING RESEARCH AND NETWORK PARTNERS:Cardiff University, United KingdomCARIPLO Factory SRL, ItalyEuropean Food Banks Federation, BelgiumCARIPLO Foundation, ItalyFoundation Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), ItalyICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability - Europe, GermanyICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, GermanyICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability - Africa, South AfricaWold Association of the Major Metropolises (Metropolis), FranceUniversity of Surrey, United KingdomInstitute of Social Sciences, Portugal

LET'S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK.

Urban food environments are simultaneously social, spatial, environmental, and political. As such, they impact the accessibility, availability, and adequacy of food within a city-region. Following the CLIC-approach, city-regions in FoodCLIC are working towards sustainability Co-benefits; strengthened rural-urban Linkages across the food system; the Inclusion of all (food) stakeholders; and the creation of Connectivities between food and other complex systems and policy priorities. FoodCLIC connects people, food, and policy in order to establish healthy, affordable, safe, and accessible food environments.

In each of the eight city-regions, a Food Policy Network will be founded and/ or strengthened in the framework of the FoodCLIC project. These Networks bring together policial actors and public authorities, scientists and higher education representatives, the civil society and the private sector. Their common goal is to study, learn and share knowledge by designing and implementing real-life interventions in the city-regions. In this way, relevant evidence can be generated that helps shape integrated food policies influencing how food is produced, processed, distributed, purchased and provided.

The FoodCLIC activities are based on methodological and theoretical foundations, such as the CLIC framework (the CLIC). The CLIC constitutes a model that guides project partners in taking action that particularly supports a transformation of our food systems. It incorporates the place-based and multi-dimensional nature of food system transformation and is built on four pillars, which can be seen as FoodCLIC’s four (interrelated) goals for food system transformation: It emphasises sustainability Co-benefits, spatial Linkages, social Inclusion and sectoral Connectivity.

With this theoretical/ conceptual framework at hand, FoodCLIC aims to create more sustainable urban food environments and empower all people to access healthy and sustainably produced food.

FoodCLIC is a four-year project funded by the EU. The project runs from September 2022 to February 2027. The acronym FoodCLIC stands for 'integrated urban FOOD policies – developing sustainability Co-benefits, spatial Linkages, social Inclusion and sectoral Connections to transform food systems in city-regions