A Systemic Urban Metabolism Framework for Food Security in Informal Settlements. Integrating System Dynamics, Spatial Analysis, and Parametric Design
(2026)
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- (en) Rapid urbanization, compounded by climate change and structural inequality,has concentrated food insecurity in informal settlements of the Global South. InLima, Peru, where approximately 21% of Metropolitan Lima's 11.6 million residentsinhabit informal settlements in the northern, eastern, and southern cone districts,food, energy, water, and waste flows remain largely invisible to formal planninginstitutions, leaving urban agriculture (UA) systematically underutilized as a foodsecurity lever. The central question this dissertation addresses is how UA can beoperationalized to increase food security in informal settlements, while accountingfor the spatial, infrastructural, political, and social conditions that shape everyday practices of settlement consolidation, care work, tenure security, and community organization. This dissertation develops and validates the Systemic Urban Metabolism Framework (SUMF), a multi-scale analytical and planning methodology for operationalizing UA in informal settlements. The SUMF is positioned as a decisionsupport framework that integrates urban metabolism, system dynamics, spatial analysis, and social-science-informed interpretation. The SUMF is grounded in a 249- household primary survey conducted in Ciudad de Gosen, Villa María del Triunfo, Lima, a consolidated coastal informal settlement of approximately 6,268 inhabitants, and is structured around five sequential work packages (WP1 to WP5). Material flow analysis quantified total food throughput at 435,921 kg/month (2.32kg/person/day), energy consumption at 66,128 kWh/month (70.4% attributable to cooking fuel), water use at 4,934 m3/month, and solid waste generation at 18,593kg/month. The Systemic Operative Framework (SOF), operationalized as a Neo4j graph database, comprises 83 variables, 1,048 indicators, and 3,697 documented intervariable relationships across 12 analytical dimensions, representing a network density of 54.3% from 6,806 possible pairs. Network centrality analysis identifiedFood Security (degree centrality 0.312), Organic Waste Generation (PageRank 0.187), and Community Organization (betweenness centrality 0.284) as the three highest-leverage variables. A system dynamics model comprising 82 variables and nine feedback loops (four reinforcing, five balancing), validated through Monte Carlo simulation (n = 1,000), demonstrated that Scenario B (Nutritional Diversity, 12,000m2 of UA area) raised the Food Security Score from 2.8 to 3.3 on a Likert 1 to 5 scale by Year 5, increased the proportion of households meeting the WHO vegetable target by 38.2%, and improved the Dietary Diversity Score from 5.8 to 6.7 out of 9. The model is treated as a dynamic hypothesis and boundary object: it makes feedbacks, constraints, and trade-offs explicit, but does not claim to exhaust the lived social complexity of informal settlement practices. Spatially explicit SD-GH coupling identified 727 eligible parcel units after PCR classification, representing 50,226 m² of suitable parcel area and 10,497 m² of net productive parcel area. The ICR workflow identified 35 eligible interstitial units, equivalent to 25,280 m² of open-ground UA potential. Under the systemic governance scenario, full interstitial integration and tenure security produce 76,303kg/yr of local food production, meeting approximately 49.6% of estimated local vegetable demand, with associated increases of 17,682 kg CO₂/yr in carbon capture and 4,438 kWh/yr in biodigester energy. These results show that UA performance depends not only on productive surface and environmental efficiency, but also on governance capacity, water access, collective maintenance, tenure arrangements, and the distribution of household labor. Governance recommendations are aligned with SDG 2, SDG 11, Ley 31315, and the New Urban Agenda. The SUMF provides a transferable, evidence-based methodology for UA planning in informal settlements across the Global South, provided that its parameters are recalibrated to local data and its outputs are interpreted through participatory and qualitative validation.
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Acevedo-De-los-Ríos, A. (2026). A Systemic Urban Metabolism Framework for Food Security in Informal Settlements. Integrating System Dynamics, Spatial Analysis, and Parametric Design. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/282222