Urban Food Infrastructures: The Role of Inner-City Universities

Abstract

Urban food infrastructures are oft-forgotten as crucial for sustainability transitions. This ethnographic case study explores the eating spaces of an inner-city university to assess its sustainability outcomes. By considering knowledge as embedded in and through social practices as “general understandings”, the paper argues that the neo-liberal organisation of eating spaces understands campus spaces as assets, conceives students as individualistic consumers, and outsources sustainability initiatives. The paper contends that these understandings have established a dominant pathway for retail prioritised, gentrified and uni-functional eating spaces, marginalising some existing hybrid and convivial food infrastructures that may be pathways for sustainable and just outcomes.