Diverse types of knowledge on a plate: a multi-perspective and multi-method approach for the transformation of urban food systems towards sustainable diets.

Urbanization processes are accompanied by growing global challenges for food systems. Urban actors are increasingly striving to address these challenges through a focus on sustainable diets. However, transforming food systems towards more sustainable diets is challenging and it is unclear what the local scope of action might be. Co-production of knowledge between science and non-science is particularly useful for analysing context-specific solutions and promise to result in more robust socio-economic, political and technical solutions. Thus, this paper aims to integrate different types and sources of knowledge to understand urban food systems transformation towards a more sustainable diet in Vienna; and, second, to analyse and reflect on the difficulties and ways forward to integrate diverse actors' perspectives, multiple methods and epistemologies. We created different future scenarios that illustrate the synergies and trade-offs of various bundles of measures and the interactions among single dimensions of sustainable diets. These scenarios show that there is plenty of scope for local action, but co-ordination across diverse groups, interests, and types of knowledge is necessary to overcome lock-ins.

Covid-19 as a chance for more food democracy in European cities? The responses of actors within Vienna's urban food system to the pandemic.

Actors within European cities had to respond to the Covid-19 crisis to maintain their urban food systems' basic functions. In this article, we ask whether these responses merely remedied the immediate challenges and maintained the status quo or the window of opportunity created by Covid-19 was used to transform urban food systems towards food democracy. We combine the food democracy framework and multi-level perspective to examine how actors of an urban food system - from niche and regime levels - reacted to the Covid-19 crisis and to explore the meaning of those responses for food democracy. Using Vienna as a case study, we conducted a media analysis (198 articles) and 11 interviews with niche actors to identify the impacts of the first Covid-19 wave and connected actors' responses. Results show that regime and niche actors responded differently to Covid-19 and that not all responses proved conducive to a transition to more food democracy. Although some responses can contribute to a more just and sustainable urban food system, many actors focused on short-term crisis management and maintaining the status quo. If Covid-19 is to become an opportunity for a transformation towards food democracy, coordinated actions by regime and niche actors are needed.