The role of Design Thinking to promote a sustainability transition within participatory urban governance: Insights from urban agriculture initiatives in Lisbon

Abstract

This article contributes to research into new forms of participatory urban governance aimed at creating more sustainable cities. Focused on food security, which has, like ‘sustainability’, economic, ecological and socio-political dimensions, our research examines how urban agricultural initiatives have been promoted in Lisbon and how connecting and integrating them in urban planning strategies could contribute to the progressive transformation of the city into a more sustainable one. This integration is viewed as a complex, ‘wicked’ problem in that it encompasses various interdependent problems that are hard to solve due to the conflicting goals of involved actors. For this reason, we suggest that Design Thinking could help urban planners in addressing it, since it offers flexible, iterative and participatory ways of generating development insights based on users’ needs and contexts. The way this methodology is used is illustrated here to carry out the literature review on these issues in Lisbon. From this, the centrality of food systems in concerns related to urban sustainability emerged, as well as suggestions on ways to adjust urban planning so that it takes better account of them in the future. Our research aligns with recent studies on the use of Design Thinking in urbanism, some of them dealing with the food-energy-water nexus, and provides, through urban agriculture, a practical focus of study that urban citizens might feel more capable to comment and participate on.