Planning for sustainable food communities: An optimal spatial allocation study of food hubs considering the 15-min city concept—The case of LebensMittelPunkte in Berlin

Abstract

Food hubs (FHs) providing neighbourhoods with regional food from agroecological production are a promising concept for a sustainable food system transformation. However, their operationalization and scaling are still unclear. We developed a methodological approach that, for the first time, scales out FHs to an entire city (Berlin) based on a 15-min walking distance and socio-culturally oriented sub-districts as underlying spatial units. We considered the population density and the distance to organic groceries, public transportation and between FHs to estimate their most suitable locations. The results reveal an optimal allocation of 231 FHs covering 91% of the city's populated areas in a radius lower than 1 km and almost the entire city within a 1.5 km radius. We found this approach to be a meaningful way to plan the inner-city allocation of FHs from an integrative perspective and to adopt urban policies by considering the local specificities of each neighbourhood. The scaling out of agroecology-based regional FHs in Berlin allows for the creation of a sustainable city-region food system that increases the resilience of the metropolitan food environment. We generally propose a participative and integrative approach in order to realise this process.

Agroecological Approaches in the Context of Innovation Hubs

“…(ii) open-source community (i.e., self-organizing and self-governing communities driven by people's needs [11][12][13]); (iii) research and development consortia (i.e., collaborative partnerships focused on exploiting and developing internal resources and competencies in areas where success is difficult to achieve [14]); (iv) crowdsourcing ecosystem (i.e., a business approach based on collective contributions with the aim to provide high quality solutions and to promote innovation [15]); (v) the orchestra model (i.e., a group of companies exploiting together a market opportunity based on one defined innovation structure established by one of the companies within the group [16]); (vi) creative Bazaar (i.e., a marketplace where a dominant company is looking to buy and sell innovative technologies, products, and services); (vii) Jam Central (i.e., a community of collaborating research centers aimed at developing innovative ideas, services or goods in a new or emerging field); (viii) MODification Station Model (i.e., innovation ecosystems where innovative ideas come from a community of customers who propose new uses for existing products); and (ix) family ecosystem (venture creation by family and business actors [8]).…”