The challenges women encounter due to numerous disparities within social superstructures are finally finding their way into mainstream debates. Interestingly, Vienna is the first European city that has been incorporating the concept of gender mainstreaming into urban planning practices since the 1990s, by providing formal platforms for women to integrate their perspectives in the city's development. This research, however, reveals that the dialogue frequently remains trapped under the restricted label of 'feminist' or 'gender-sensitive', while it deserves a deeper, more nuanced discussion. Vienna’s top-down planning leaves little space for informal strategies and hence, abandons the voices of under-represented people, particularly within immigrant communities of Vienna’s outer districts. Therefore, this research dissects the city’s gender sensitivity using a set of conflicts revealing the dissonance between the social realities of vulnerable migrant women in one of the city’s fringe districts, Favoriten, and the efforts of female activists and the city administration. The data collected during extensive field interviews is documented through drawing as a method to showcase that women are less likely to simply ‘be’ in public space. These findings lead to proposal of a discussion-starter role-playing game, which places migrant women as central figures of planning processes. Disrupting the gendered order is a critical examination of how Vienna, the humanist city with a feminist attitude, can transcend beyond its rigid definition of formal urban planning and aim for multi-perspective emancipation, subsequently redefining gender mainstreaming worldwide. ... Read more

Our modern food structure is unsustainable and fragile. Changes like climate crises, rising food demand, biodiversity loss, and the technological revolution will radicalize how and what we eat and produce. Whichever changes will happen, they will have an effect on the food system. In South Holland, this will happen with the transition to a circular economy. In order to deal with the unpredictability of these changes, this report proposes to create a resilient system. The main question that will be answered is ‘How can resilient food systems contribute to a circular agri-food sector in South Holland?’. In this context, resilience is the ability to ensure the provision of system functions in the face of increasingly complex and accumulating shocks and stresses.
Through capacities of robustness, adaptability, and transformability a just transformation to the circular food economy can be ensured. The strategy Recipe for Resilience derives from this definition. Based on a network of a mix of three types of hubs, the strategy calls for a more widespread and integrated distribution of knowledge about food and the food system. These hubs are the Seeds, where knowledge and food produce germinates, the Melting Pot, common interacting ground for all actors, and the Mixers, the in-between spaces that are not transparent. Together, they supply a network facilitating producers, distributors, and consumers. Thanks to this high-functioning network of knowledge, the main goals of the strategy can be achieved.
During and after implementation, there will be high stakeholder engagement through all layers of society, local food cycles with feedback loops to distribution centers and farmers, and the knowledge about it will be widespread throughout the South Holland population. The constant exchange of expertise will ensure feedback loops throughout all layers of the knowledge production. Through this constant adaptation and transformation, a resilient system can be achieved. ... Read more