Urban food systems are increasingly recognised as arenas for addressing climate resilience, food security, social inclusion and sustainable urban development. Yet food-related planning responsibilities often remain fragmented across municipal departments, market regulations, environmental policy and community initiatives. This research examines how community-based food initiatives and participatory governance processes generate planning-relevant knowledge for sustainable urban food transitions.

Drawing on qualitative research conducted within the SURFIT project in Kraków, Poland, the study combines insights from ten sustainable food initiatives and three multi-stakeholder workshops involving farmers, market organisers, municipal officers, public institutions, NGOs and researchers. Using a transition-oriented and relational perspective, it analyses how grassroots food networks create, translate and scale their impact through everyday practices, community engagement, institutional collaboration and access to urban infrastructures.

The findings show that sustainable food initiatives function not only as alternative forms of food provision, but also as socio-spatial infrastructures of learning, participation and urban experimentation. Their transformative potential depends on multiple scaling pathways, including horizontal diffusion, cultural change, institutional recognition and embedding within broader governance arrangements. At the same time, these processes remain shaped by resource fragility, regulatory constraints, uneven access to space and selective institutional recognition.

The research contributes to debates on community engagement, co-production and environmental planning by showing how urban food initiatives can help “build planning up” from situated practices and relational forms of knowledge. It argues that planning scholarship can benefit from treating food networks as relational spaces where future urban food systems are imagined, negotiated and practiced.

While the professional standing of planning is commonly justified by advancing the 'public interest’, public confidence is being eroded by ever increasing threats and demands such as climate change, energy, housing crisis, political and economic instability. As a future-oriented discipline and practice, planning has the capacity, at least the remit, to coordinate a more desired future and the new Planning and Development Act 2024 in Ireland aims to reposition the role of planning in leading Ireland to a stable, resilient sustainable future. New measures aim to enhance clarity, improve consistency, and increase confidence in the planning system. It’s seen as a move to a “plan-led” as opposed to ‘development enablement’ (Lennon & Waldron, 2019) approach to planning. It includes new statutory timelines for decisions, new tools and a shift from a six year to a ten-year local authority plan for long-term, strategic sustainable development. However, considering the number and complexity of transitions required to achieve sustainable development these measures cannot, on their own, achieve national and European sustainable development policy objectives. Each of these transitions and pathways to achieve them, is associated with different interests, specific actors, imply a variety of cultural and political commitments; sustainability transitions happen in place. This paper therefore argues that with these new legislative requirements, it is now time to progress the mantra of, for the ‘public interest’ to ‘for the public with the public’.

Originating from research conducted during an Horizon Europe Project, FLIARA, this paper aims to combine findings from its participatory futures foresight work with theories from sustainability transitions (MLP framework) to develop a framework for planning practice that can enable true public participation and deliver ‘actionable knowledge’ (Hölscher, 2023) that can facilitate sustainable niche innovations to emerge, take hold and lead to transformative change. As the research was related to gender, rural based and employed a rural typology, the paper also adds to knowledge on the gender and spatial dimensions of sustainability transitions.

References:

Hölscher, K., Wittmayer, J.M., Olfert, A., Hirschnitz-Garbers, M., Walther, J. and Schiller, G. (2023) ‘Creating actionable knowledge one step at a time: An analytical framework for tracing systems and agency in niche innovation pathways’, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 46, 100682. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.11.007

Lennon, M., & Waldron, R. (2019) Overview of the Irish planning system. European planning studies De-democratising the Irish planning system, European Planning Studies, 27(8), pp. 1607–1625.

Stroke survivors often encounter challenges in community ambulation due to gait impairments. Evidence indicates that stroke survivors demonstrate adequate walking ability in clinical and residential settings but undergo considerable challenges when navigating transitional spaces between these settings in urban contexts. These attributes stem from unpredictability and challenging outdoor conditions. Hence, it is essential to support stroke survivors to re-engage in their daily community activities. A substantial gap remains in design approaches for transitional urban environments that bridge clinical and residential settings to support stroke survivors’ daily community activities. This study aims to identify urban environmental factors that affect stroke survivors’ mobility in transitional urban environments.

Stroke is considered the single largest cause of adult disability in Northern Ireland. Consequently, this study is conducted in West and North Belfast, which encompasses super output areas identified as among the most health-deprived in Northern Ireland. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining planning policy analysis with built environmental interventions. Stroke survivors in West and North Belfast are purposively selected, and their perspectives on urban environmental determinants of mobility are recorded using the focus group photo–elicitation method. Following thematic and policy analysis, an innovative planning strategy is implemented and developed further through stakeholder input and collaboration.

This study offers insights for urban planners and policymakers to guide and improve necessary changes in planning and policy development processes. Overall, the findings underscore valuable insights for fostering a mobility-friendly urban environment for stroke survivors undergoing post-stroke rehabilitation, thereby supporting and enhancing inclusivity in urban planning.