Planning for change : transformation labs for an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa
Date
2020-11-17
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BioMed Central
Abstract
There has been a call for more participatory processes to feed into urban planning formore
resilient food systems. This paper describes a process of knowledge co-production for
transforming towards an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa. A
‘transformative space’ was created though a T-Lab process involving change-agents
advocating for an alternative food system, and was designed to discuss challenges in the
local food system from a range of perspectives, in order to co-develop potentially
transformative innovations that could feed into government planning. In this paper, we
describe and reflect on the T-lab in order to consider whether its design was able to meet
its objective: to initiate an experimental phase of coalition-building by diverse actors that
could feed into the provincial government’s strategic focus on food and nutrition security.
Our findings indicate that T-labs have the potential to be important mechanisms for
initiating and sustaining transformative change. They can be complementary to urban
planning processes seeking to transform complex social-ecological systems onto more
sustainable development pathways. However, as with all experimental co-production
processes, there is significant learning and refinement that is necessary to ensure the
process can reach its full potential. A key challenge we encountered was how to foster
diversity and difference in opinions in the context of significant historical legacies of
inequality, whilst simultaneously acting for ‘the common good’ and seeking ways to scale
impact across different contexts. The paper concludes with deliberations on the nature of
planning and navigating towards systemic transformative change.
Description
CITATION: Pereira, L., et al. 2020. Planning for change : transformation labs for an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa. Urban Transformations, 2:13, doi:10.1186/s42854-020-00016-8.
The original publication is available at https://urbantransformations.biomedcentral.com
The original publication is available at https://urbantransformations.biomedcentral.com
Keywords
Food systems -- Transformative change, Technology laboratory and professional development (Tlab), Food security -- South Africa -- Cape Town, Nutrition policy -- South Africa -- Cape Town, Food supply -- South Africa -- Cape Town
Citation
Pereira, L., et al. 2020. Planning for change : transformation labs for an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa. Urban Transformations, 2:13, doi:10.1186/s42854-020-00016-8