Dear Colleagues,

Food Security involves a complex set of issues:

1. The issue of the quantity of food available to certain segments of the population and to the populations of certain developing countries in urban areas goes back a considerable length of time.

2. On the other hand, it has become increasingly evident that there are major concerns about the quality of some foodstuffs that are available which can affect human health. To a large extent, this is linked to the increasingly dominant form of agriculture in developed countries that has been encouraged by many governments over the last 50 years—productivist or capitalist agriculture. While this form of agriculture has contributed substantially to providing food supplies, it has also become increasingly criticized for producing foodstuffs that are not healthy.

3. Modern or productivist or capitalist agriculture has also produced other negative externalities, such as contributing to water pollution of nearby rivers and lakes and also altering the physical environment for flora and fauna, as well as sometimes destroying heritage landscapes.

4. There is also the role of different types of food production within urban agglomerations and the issues of the volume of food produced, its quality in terms of human health and the various externalities that such food production can produce (both negative and positive).

This Special Issue of Urban Science on “Urban Food Security” welcomes articles that deal with these different aspects of Food Security. At the same time, the Special Issue also welcomes articles which present analyses of how different issues are being dealt with, such as through developing more sustainable foodstuffs from both the point of view of consumers (and human health) and the environment. From the perspective of the changing values of consumers, the Special Issue is also interested in how consumers and producers can work together to produce more sustainable foodstuffs.

Finally, food security can also be influenced by other stressors such as climate change and variability, a stressor with differential impacts on different countries and territories. The Special Issue also welcomes articles on these other stressors that can affect food security.

Dr. Christopher Bryant
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• urban food security;

• volume of food;

• quality of food and human health;

• challenges to improving food security;

• stressors affecting food security;

• policies and actions aimed at improving food security