Smart and Edible: How Edible Cities Create Smart Public Spaces

Edible cities enable the public to harvest produce on public land, supported by public governance arrangements between city administrations and civil society. The main goal of such initiatives is to transform food systems. The project investigated edible cities by comparing cases in Austria, Germany and France. Impacts of edible city initiatives were assessed by expert interviews. The project aimed to generate policy knowledge on the process, outcomes, and good practices of edible city initiatives, which are potentially relevant for the Vienna Smart City strategy and its possible further development towards smart food and public spaces. Edible city initiatives that are jointly driven by the municipality and civil society actors are most promising with regard to citizen engagement, collective empowerment, and the transformation of urban food systems. To this end, all actors involved have to develop a shared vision of edible city, and implement it cautiously, though consistently and in a committed, participatory, and transparent way. This report outlines concrete policy recommendations for successfully transforming Vienna into an edible city.