Within the frame of „Future of Urban Food“ the following activities will take place:
Inter-, and transdisciplinary research design
Activities that will ensure that the researchers from different disciplines can work together in an interdisciplinary way and the non-academic stakeholders can contribute to the project in a beneficial and productive way.
Modelling of ecological and economic impacts of different food habits
For “Future of Urban Food” different bio-physical and agricultural-economic models will be further developed and adapted for the concrete research questions. The models will be matched with each other in order to quantify specific ecological and economic indicators for the current state of the Viennese urban agrofood system, for seven different extreme options and for a scenario that was created and selected by Viennese stakeholders.
The extreme options are different combinations of different values for the following key factors:
- Share of organic products (current state (8%); 100%);
- Meat share of diets (current state (70 kg/person); low (20kg)
- Origin of Food (current state (70 kg/person); maximum regionality)
Situation analysis and social acceptance
First an extensive literature review on urban agrofood systems in general as well as the Viennese food system in particular will be conducted. In addition numerous expert interviews with people from the different sectors of the WUAFS will be accomplished. Both is the foundation for a network analysis of the WUAFS and for the creation of a qualitative system model, which will be used to identify key leverage points of the WUAFS. In addition representative quantitative surveys will be conducted to assess the social acceptance of different food habits and of stakeholder scenarios.
Inquiry of post and future transition pathways
„Future of Urban Food“ on the one hand analysis past transitions of the WUAFS and on the other hand also investigates possible future transitions pathways for Vienna. For the later we create – on the foundation of the system model and together with Viennese – three to five future scenarios for Vienna in the year 2048. After that stakeholders will select the most appreciated scenario and we will create a concrete strategy to realize it.
Synthesis and recommendations
After the completion of the other activities the results will be brought together and get synthesized. On the foundation of this we develop concrete recommendations for politics and city administration.