Chapter 9: Restorative economics – food hubs as catalysts of a new urban economy

The common conception of the economy is a throughput model where inputs are converted into useful goods and services. Emissions and waste are the unfortunate by-products of this conversion process. Inputs and emission and waste by-products seemingly come from nowhere and disappear into nowhere. In other words, the common conception is that the economy has no context. As a result, the unintended side effects of economic activity disappear from the purview of economics. Economists refer to these unaccounted side effects of economic activity as ‘externalities’. The deficiencies of this contextless model have long been recognised by ecological and social economists. This chapter outlines a new economic model developed by the lead author called restorative economics. Like the doughnut model developed by Kate Raworth (2012), it places the economy in its social and environmental context and makes long neglected social and environmental impacts of economic activity visible. The restorative economics model, however, makes a further distinction regarding the context of economic activity that makes the model more operational. It distinguishes between sources and sinks. Sinks are the counterpoints to the resources that feed the front end of the economic process. Sinks deal with the tail end of the process. The restorative economics model therefore places value not only on the resources used to produce goods and services and on these outputs of goods and services themselves, but also on the many social and environmental sink factors that absorb emissions, process waste, reduce stress, and alleviate social tension. Restorative economics pays attention to both the resources and the sinks needed to sustain economic activity in the long run. We illustrate the value of these sinks by reviewing several local and regional initiatives from Washington DC, namely the Urban Food Hubs model, the Five Pillars of Economic Development, the Food Connects vision and the ambitious agenda of the Sustainable DC plan. We conclude the chapter by reviewing policies that support a restorative economy.