Making nutritious food more accessible in an urban society : The potential of community creation and citizen engagement in food-related social innovation projects

Abstract: Individual food choices have a considerable impact on public health and the environment. The incidence of nutrition-related diseases has been continuously increasing during the last decades. Diets higher in plant-based foods have shown to be healthier and more environmentally sustainable.Many urban social innovation projects based on citizen engagement and community building are able to influence food consumption habits. However, there is a large variety of projects, which target specific population groups and focus on different sustainability issues. To understand how social innovation projects located in Germany, and especially Berlin, use citizen engagement and community creation to encourage nutritious and sustainable food choices, the research team conducted a qualitative research study consisting of semi-structured interviews and participant observations. The results were compared and validated using different social change, social innovation, network and leadership theories. When people with various backgrounds come together over a shared purpose and interact with each other, they can influence each other’s opinions and behaviors. A physical community setting was shown to be efficient to create awareness about sustainable and nutritious food choices. In order to include all population groups, citizens need to feel heard and understood, and have to be directly engaged in the decision-making process. A need for a leadership figure or a democratic leadership group is highlighted, and a combination of ‘transformational leadership’ and ‘authentic leadership’ styles proved to be the most effective. Urban food social innovation projects tend to cooperate with each other, as well as with other leaders and organizations, influencing them and serving as role models. These findings can help social innovation projects that implement citizen engagement and community building practices to efficiently promote nutritious and plant-based food choices among an urban population. Since this study is based on a limited number of organizations in Berlin and other regions of Germany, further research in other urban and/or rural environments is needed.