Abstract

Urbanization processes have been accompanied by a shift towards diets that have placed increased pressures on the environment and human health. City governments are increasingly striving to address these challenges through a policy focus on “sustainable diets”. Using the example of the city of Vienna (Austria), this paper adopts an innovative multi-actor approach to unpack the complexities involved in the implementation of the core principles of sustainable diets. The analysis of data collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with key urban food system actors identifies place-based peculiarities and drivers of change that are not yet discussed within debates on urban food. As we conclude, there are important methodological implications emerging from our findings for both policy-makers and researchers interested in the design, implementation and evaluation of urban food strategies that contribute to democratizing the food system.

Highlights

  • Over the last decades, urbanization has been accompanied by changes towards diets that have placed increased pressure on the envi­ ronment and human health

  • In the context of the current environ­ mental and climate crisis, the concept of “sustainable diets” (SDs) is gaining traction, both in the academic literature (Johnston et al, 2014) and in the policy discourse (Sonnino et al, 2016), as a possible leverage point to devise urban food strategies1 that mitigate the environmental impacts of urban food consumption patterns

  • In some cases urban food strategies promulgate lifestyles that can lead to social exclusion and gentrification processes (Cretella and Buenger, 2016), set in motion dynamics that originate political tensions between different levels of governance (Sonnino et al, 2019) or are over-dependent, at the implementation stage, on skilled public employees or engaged civil so­ ciety organizations (Coulson and Sonnino, 2019; Sonnino et al, 2019). These findings corroborate the importance of identifying overlapping interests and goals of different groups of actors and of gathering placebased knowledge about the food system to establish the foundations of a sustainable food strategy (Campbell, 2004) that is sensitive to the cultural, social and economic context

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Summary

Introduction

Urbanization has been accompanied by changes towards diets that have placed increased pressure on the envi­ ronment and human health. The United Nations Environment Programme (2012) summarizes the key principles of SDs in terms of reduced consumption of meat, dairy products and food and drinks with low nutritional value, accompanied by an increased consumption of seasonal fruit and vegetables and of environmentally-friendly products. Others have strengthened this basic definition by stressing that SDs should be affordable, fair, accessible and culturally acceptable (Burlingame and Dernini 2010). The drivers ranked as the most relevant for the achievement of an SD in Vienna were further analysed to provide both theoretical and practical insights into the relevance of a multi-actor approach to uncover different perceptions and interpretations of the dynamics that shape (and are shaped by) a UFS and, to establish the placebased foundations of a sustainable food strategy

Contextualizing sustainable diets
Defining a sustainable diet
Developing a multi-actor approach
Understanding Urban Food Systems from a multi-actor perspective
Unpacking the UFS critical drivers
Citizens’ food consumption practices
Information and education about food
Changes in urban and hinterland production
Findings
Delivering sustainable urban diets through a multi-actor approach
Full Text
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