Abstract:  As the horizon for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development draws nearer in an increasingly urbanised world, questions remain about how urban governance can promote a more just and resilient food system. Municipalities are often tasked with the local implementation of national policies, a form of top-down governance. However, municipalities can also engage in bottom-up governance by cooperating with alternative food networks (AFNs) to influence, for example, the city’s political agenda. Thus, investigating the dynamics of municipalities and AFNs in bottom-up governance is crucial to explaining and supporting urban food system transformation. This article explores how municipalities can act as agents of “prefigurative politics”—enacting the values and practices of ideal, contested food futures. Drawing on interviews and participant observations in Malmö, Sweden, we show how the municipality supports local AFNs and actively participates in their development. These practices reveal how municipalities negotiate power, cultivate diverse relationships, and embed alternative temporalities of change within urban food governance. By examining the municipality’s role in the establishment of the Malmö Food Council, this article advances debates on how municipalities can contribute to post-2030 urban food agendas. Using prefiguration as an analytical lens to understand how power operates across scales of governance, our analysis reveals how municipalities can become sites where future food systems are not merely planned and governed but also imagined, enacted, and negotiated in the present. It also reveals the challenges and limitations facing municipalities in working towards a just and resilient food system.

Keywords:  alternative food networks; experimental governance; food democracy; food policy councils; food systems transformation; grassroots organisation; prefigurative politics; social movements

Published:   27 October 2026

Issue:   Vol 15 (2027): Urban Food Governance Beyond 2030: Resilience, Justice, and the Politics of Sustainability Transitions (In Progress)