Food, Space and the City: Theorizing the Free Spaces of FoodShare's Good Food Markets

Abstract

This paper explores a social and spatial (socio-spatial) response to urban food insecurity in Toronto, Ontario as expressed through FoodShare’s Good Food Market (GFM) program. I argue that the GFMs draw on a multi-scalar conception of urban food insecurity to inform a strategy of resistance to the globalized food system and as a means of reducing food insecurity in Toronto. In as much as the GFM markets are relatively fixed places of resistance to the globalized and industrialized food system, I argue they can be more broadly theorized within the free space literature, a product of the confluence of social movement and critical human geography scholarship. Situating the GFM markets within this hybrid theoretical context illuminates strengths and raises cautions of employing place-based scalar strategies in the context of urban food activism.