The Creation of a Sustainable Urban Foodscape in San Francisco City and County

Abstract: Food policies have become increasingly relevant for the federal and municipal planning in the recent decades. Poor quality diets are associated with a number of diseases, such as obesity, heart diseases, diabetes, and some cancers. I have done a case study of food policy in San Francisco. I focus on the three dimensions of the city food planning, such as access to healthy food, sustainable and local food production, and the importance of nutrition education. For the analysis I chose the population of recipients of one of the federal food assistance programs in the U.S., the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), implemented in the state of California under the name of CalFresh. Implementation of this program under the guidelines of the San Francisco food policy is analyzed in order to demonstrate the importance of food planning in solving the challenges of food access and poor diets, to show how governmental and public engagement in the formation and implementation of such policies and programs on a national and local level can help promote healthy living among the population, and to demonstrate the potential complexities and shortfalls of the implementation process. I find that despite of the guidelines on Healthy and Sustainable Food introduced in 2009 by the Office of the Mayor of San Francisco City and County that explicitly target food access, regional food production and nutritional education, some of the areas require more attention and facilitation from the Food Policy Council.