Exploring Regional Food Futures in Peri-Urban Austria—Participatory Generation of Scenarios and Policy Recommendations

Niklas Gudowsky-Blatakes () and Mahshid Sotoudeh
Additional contact information
Niklas Gudowsky-Blatakes: Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Bäckerstr. 13, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Mahshid Sotoudeh: Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Bäckerstr. 13, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 9, 1-15

Abstract: Current food systems provide relative food security but compromise planetary health and largely fail to address climate change challenges. Regional food supplies can contribute to sustainable production and consumption, reducing the dependence on global supply chains. However, food systems’ complexity and rigidity hinder the implementation of climate-conscious, healthier practices. The City.Food.Basket project explored regional food baskets in urban and peri-urban settings in Austria for the City of Graz and its surroundings, developing models for regional, healthy, and low-climate-impact diets. Against this background, we present a qualitative study that generated three explorative scenarios for promoting regional diets using a Delphi-based expert-stakeholder survey method with participatory elements. A scenario workshop elaborated on interconnecting actions to strengthen regional food supply, including making regional food a tender criterion, reducing waste, ensuring affordability, and shifting subsidies to climate-conscious practices for Graz. While the method successfully provides socio-technical futures for policy orientation, its direct policy impact remains low due to time constraints, short project duration, limited project resources, and differing rationalities between research and policymaking. This study highlights the need for improved connectivity between transdisciplinary research, foresight methods, and regional policy cycles to enhance such projects’ effectiveness.

Keywords: food systems; regional diets; participatory foresight; scenarios (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/3800/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/3800/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:9:p:3800-:d:1640551

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().