Within the broader framework of the EU-H2020 EdiCitNet project—a large-scale collaborative project with a multi-stakeholder approach—there is the opportunity to observe participatory planning approaches to mainstream nature-based, edible solutions to solve specific social urban problems in an international group of six cities—Berlin (Germany), Carthage (Tunisia), Sant Feliu de Llobregat (Spain), Letchworth (United Kingdom), Šempeter pri Gorici (Slovenia), and Lomé (Togo). One year after the project started, the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary to transfer most participatory planning processes to online platforms. This new format presented challenges to planning and voluntary stakeholder engagement due to different capacities regarding technical requirements as well as location-specific social circumstances. In this paper, we aim to shed light on the potentials and trade-offs in shifting to online participation and who gets to participate under digital Participatory Action Research (PAR) circumstances. We used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the planning progress and the transition to working online in the six cities during the first wave of the pandemic. The study identifies critical implications of COVID-19 on participatory planning processes, the challenges for online participation, and the effectiveness of measures applied to tackle those challenges. The transition to online participatory planning described in this paper emphasizes organizational rather than technical remedies. While the planning progress in all cities was delayed, some faced significant challenges in the transition to online due to the lack of technical or community capacities. This was fostered through the diverse and new realities of the stakeholders ranging from meeting existential needs to adapting to alternative forms of working and caring. The reflections in this paper offer learnings from the disruptions caused by COVID-19 to better understand how participatory planning processes can be managed online along the lines of equity, access, and participation. The findings demonstrate how participatory processes in the ongoing crisis can be maintained, with relevance to future waves of this and other pandemics.

<p>Research is ever deepening its knowledge in a multitude of fields. Such research contributes in great depth to identifying and understanding problems (e.g. in the field of climate change). However, when it comes to societal implementation, it may ultimately lead to zero knowledge at infinite depth, as it has been ironically put. To tackle sustainability, respectively to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) set by the UN, science has to come together and work in transdisciplinary teams. Scientists are poorly prepared for such an exercise and standard procedures of scientific work, sharing and publication of results in specialised conferences and journals do not help.</p><p>In view of this problem, the Austrian Alliance of Sustainable Universities and research centres has created a project, UniNEtZ (Universities and Sustainable Development Goals), to jointly address the issues raised by the SDGs and develop suggestions for policies in a multidisciplinary approach. In order to facilitate this for the scientists involved, UniNEtZ is preparing collaborative measures and methods to address the issue of cooperation between disciplines to guarantee that all important interactions among SDGs are considered and addressed in equal detail. It is expected that changes in the way science and scientists are used to work together are necessary to achieve that. The developed concepts will be published in a handbook for UniNEtZ,</p><p>In a next step, the  handbook also hints at the need for municipal, regional, and national administrations to transition towards a kind of governance, that enables implementation of policies towards the SDGs. Current hierarchically organised structures don’t seem ideal for the kind of transsectoral cooperation that will be needed to implement the expected measures.</p><p>The contribution presents the findings of this work on cooperative research and governance structures.<br><br>Keywords: SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals, transdisciplinary research, transsectoral implementation</p>

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