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This paper investigates the emerging importance of food and Urban Agriculture in the city of Rotterdam. In particular these themes are the focus of two policy documents recently launched by the municipality: the Sustainability Program and the strategic agenda Food and the City . In the process of rebranding the city for middle and upper class residents and creative workers, these strategies directly contribute to the marketing of Rotterdam as the most “sustainable world harbor city”. By way of discourse analysis, we analyze policy documents to highlight the tensions between the advertised social and economic benefits of these operations. Food and Urban Agriculture emerges as being framed to target the needs of the low-income multicultural population, and at the same time of the upper and creative class . The paper concludes that municipal experiments on food can be used strategically to foster competition and city-branding; as such these can ultimately be considered a form of creative city politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities worldwide are challenged by a high complexity of acute and chronic problems, including challenges related to economic development, social polarisation and segregation as well as climate change and ecological degradation. While all of these problems are complex in themselves, they are also interrelated. Addressing them in a meaningful way requires governance systems with systemic capacities to deal with complexity. In order to create resilience in urban systems, cities need to be able to learn, adapt and transform across sectors and levels. One definition of urban resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow regardless of the kinds of chronic stress and acute shocks they experience. This is the definition the Rockefeller Foundation adopts in its mission to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world by facilitating the building of resilience in cities worldwide through its 100 Resilient Cities Programme, launched in 2013. Rotterdam is one of the first cities to participate in this programme. The city has been a front-runner in preparing for climate change and striving for urban sustainability. This paper assesses the concept of urban resilience, introduces the Rockefeller Foundation's effort in building city resilience worldwide and illustrates this with the Rotterdam case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]