A bottom-up approach to sustainable and inclusive urban food and waste management systems development. Human-centered smart city projects

The term “smart city” is a semantic jungle where a diversity of topic and subtopics fight to make part of it. Notably, recent scholarly discourse has expanded beyond the customary technological facets to encompass concerns related to environmental sustainability and societal issues. Within this expanding arena, the notion of food justice and the adverse side effects of food production have come to the fore. Adopting a bottomup approach to urban development, we selected six cases regarding urban food and foodwaste management systems which can serve as exemplary models for future smart city implementations. In conclusion, it becomes evident that the active involvement of citizens, spanning from "favelas" to universities, holds a pivotal role in the journey towards building sustainable and inclusive smart cities.