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Food insecurity is rising across European cities, although urban tourism continues to expand. This juxtaposition reveals ongoing tensions in how cities pursue economic growth while ensuring equitable access to food. Drawing on Rotterdam as an illustrative case, this study examines how food, tourism, and community resilience intersect within an advanced capitalist urban context. Using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, we analyse local policy documents, organisational websites and stakeholder interviews to explore how meanings and silences around food access, tourism development, and resilience are discursively constructed. Our findings show that while policy agendas foreground health, sustainability, and economic competitiveness, they often overlook agency, justice, and systemic food inequality. Tourism actors express strong ethical commitments to local sourcing and community wellbeing, yet these intentions remain weakly embedded in structural frameworks. Paradoxes emerge as food is celebrated for authenticity and destination branding, even as grassroots food initiatives struggle for visibility and support. Nonetheless, opportunities for transformation exist in emerging collaborations and post-growth visions that treat food and tourism as interconnected systems. We argue that aligning tourism planning with justice-oriented food system governance can strengthen community resilience and support more sustainable urban futures in the advanced European cities.
Farkić et al. (Tue,) studied this question.