URBAL : Urban-Driven Innovations For Sustainable Food Systems

Urbal: Urban-Driven Innovations for Sustainable Food Systems is an international project that uses participatory research in eight cities to develop and test a holistic methodology to map the impact pathways that go from urban innovations to all dimension of sustainability of food systems.

Mapping impact pathways will allow Urbal to develop a methodology that describes how innovations take place in terms of knowledge and material flows, networks, challenges and opportunities. Some impacts of innovations are obvious, but others are indirect, mediated, incidental, retroactive, unexpected or delayed. The Urbal mapping of innovation impact pathways aims to depict this complexity. A sustainability framework is at the core of our research approach with environmental, socio-cultural, food security, and nutrition and governance considerations central to our research. We are interested in innovations that include two or more of these sustainability dimensions.

Urbal’s goal is to develop the methodology as a decision-making tool for practitioners and policymakers as a way to provide a common overview of innovation impact pathways and how they evolve. We will do this by engaging practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders in participatory workshops to make impact pathways apparent and to co-produce knowledge about how practitioners use innovations to bring about change.