Systemic Design for Food Self-Sufficiency in Urban Areas

The 'Covid-Trigger': New Light on Urban Agriculture and Systemic Approach to Urbanism to Co-Create a Sustainable Lisbon

In 2018, Lisbon won the title of Green capital of Europe 2020. It was described by the Expert Panel as an inspirational city which had started its journey towards sustainability during a period of economic crisis. A year later, Covid-19 had become a global pandemic. Imposed confinements highlighted the extent to which globalisation has spread the virus, as well as the particular fragility of places like cities where people, living together, were asked to not physically interact anymore. Exploring further that very particular global crisis can help to identify the faults in our economic systems and to ask why Lisbon was neither resilient nor sustainable in the face of that adversity. In addition to highlighting how weak our health is, Covid-19 has exacerbated vulnerabilities in Lisbon such as job losses (especially in the touristic sector), food supply (Portugal imports 70% of its food) and food waste. This paper explores how the activity which, 'par excellence', meets the most basic of our needs (food), through the example of Urban Agriculture (UA), could contribute to discussions on what makes a city sustainable. A literature review on UA in Lisbon highlights its various benefits, complemented by a broader literature review which converges to showing how UA can help to address the vulnerabilities generated or exacerbated by Covid. Having shown its potential contribution to addressing crises, this article then suggests to examine how systems approaches could help to incorporate UA further in a new type of more participatory urbanism aimed at creating sustainable cities.

Sustainable performance in tourism SMEs: a soft modeling approach

Purpose

This paper aims to present a model to incentivize sustainable performance (SUP) in small- and medium-sized tourism by strengthening inner relations to adapt to a complex environment.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors adopted the systemic approach complementing analytic, tourism, partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM), social network analysis (SNA) and systemic approach tools as follows: frame the problem through the soft systems methodology and SNA and identify the conflicting relationships; apply PLS-PM to validate the model; and propose new interactions for small- and medium-sized enterprises conducive to SUP based on the viable system model.

Findings

Considering the results, the authors pinpointed factors and relationships managers can address to foster SUP, highlighting the need to reinforce feedback loops and reduce inconsistencies between primary operations with coordination and management mechanisms.

Research limitations/implications

This work is limited to the organizational domain. Although the results apply to the Mexican context, this could be overcome using methodological complementarity to extend the ideas to other organizations.

Practical implications

This study invites discussing methods and viewpoints for rethinking SUP because of multiple factors. This requires adopting methodological complementarity to generate alternatives and reconfiguring inner organizational interactions.

Originality/value

The model captures minimum but sufficient components advising leaders about SUP. This proposal differs from previous studies because it suggests exploiting methodological complementarity to capture the insights of key operative actors to conceive the model. Hence, the authors suggest new relations among organizational factors so managers can develop strategies for adaptability.

"Food Village": An Innovative Alternative Food Network Based on Human Scale Development Economic Model

Although the different alternative food networks (AFNs) have experienced increases worldwide for the last thirty years, they are still unable to provide an alternative capable of spreading on a large scale. They in fact remain niche experiments due to some limitations on their structure and governance. Thus, this study proposes and applies a design method to build a new sustainable food supply chain model capable of realizing a “jumping scale”. Based on the theoretical and value framework of the Civil Economy (CE), the Economy for the Common Good (ECG), and the Development on a Human Scale (H-SD), the proposed design model aims to satisfy the needs of all stakeholders in the supply chain. Max-Neef’s Needs Matrix and Design Thinking (DT) tools were used to develop the design model. Applying the design method to the food chain has allowed us to develop the concept of the “Food Village”, an innovative food supply network far from the current economic mechanisms and based on the community and eco-sustainability.

Introduction to the Special Issue “A Systemic Perspective on Urban Food Supply: Assessing Different Types of Urban Agriculture”

The production of food within cities through urban agriculture can be considered as a nature-based solution and is argued to be an important response to the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as to climate change and other urban challenges. However, current research on urban agriculture is still fragmented, calling for a systematic and integrative assessment of different forms of urban agriculture and the drivers and constraints for their effective realization. In this context, the Special Issue presents conceptual and empirical research articles from around the world on the impact and implementation potential of various types of urban agriculture. The studies of this Special Issue cover a broad range of impact and implementation dimensions, asssessment methods and geographical backgrounds that can support future studies to develop a systemic perspective on urban food production.

From Nature-Based to Nature-Driven: Landscape First for the Design of Moeder Zernike in Groningen

Global climate change impacts the future of urbanism. The future is increasingly uncertain, and current responses in urban planning practice are often human-centered. In general, this is a way to respond to change that is oriented towards improving the life of people in the short term, often extracting resources from the environment at dangerous levels. This impacts the entire ecological system, and turns out to be negative for biodiversity, resilience, and, ultimately, human life as well. Adaptation to climatic impacts requires a long-term perspective based in the understanding of nature. The objective of the presented research is to find explorative ways to respond to the unknown unknowns through designing and planning holistically for the Zernike campus in Groningen, the Netherlands. The methods used in this study comprise co-creative design-led approaches which are capable of integrating sectoral problems into a visionary future plan. The research findings show how embracing a nature-driven perspective to urban design increases the adaptive capacity, the ecological diversity, and the range of healthy food grown on a university campus. This study responds to questions of food safety, and growing conditions, of which the water availability is the most pressing. Considering the spatial concept, this has led to the necessity to establish a novel water connection between the site and the sea.

Factors to Foster Organizational Sustainability in Tourism SMEs

Small and medium-sized tourism companies (SMEs) strongly depend on their collaborators to achieve competitiveness and sustainability. In this sense, these organizations need to identify those factors that help them to use their resources and efforts to achieve the aforementioned goals. This article proposes a model oriented to organizational sustainability in the tourism sector. A systemic approach was adopted to articulate this research; therefore, the soft systems methodology was applied to structure the problem and express a conceptual model that suggests relationships as an alternative solution to the expressed problem. Partial least squares path modeling was applied to statistically validate the relationships expressed in the construct. Results suggest that the relationships proposed in the construct are valid and may promote organizational sustainability. The ideas developed are restricted to the organizational domain and although the results apply in a Mexican context, this potential limitation can be offset by the multi-methodological approach proposed, extending the model’s application to other types of organizations. This study may enable scholars and managers to improve communication and inter-organizational relationships, allowing organizations to focus their strategies and efforts using systems thinking to increase responsiveness and adaptation.