The latest EdiCitNet publication explores the ongoing challenges of digital equity and the affects of the pandemic on participatory planning processes.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the participatory planning process in the Edible Cities Network project, in particular the work with the project’s Follower Cities (Berlin, Carthage, Guangzhou, Lomé, Montevideo, Sant Feliu and Sempeter pri Gorici) who are working – mostly online – to develop Edible City Masterplans. The project partners involved in this work have been assessing this impact in order to learn from the pandemic – about what can be done to make digital processes more effective and identify what challenges occur.

With this paper, published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, the EdiCitNet Follower Cities provided insights into their disrupted workflow and helped the project to better understand the difficulties in each city during the pandemic. Additionally, 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.

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