On June 25th the Living Lab Members of Prinzessinnengarten Kollektiv Berlin in Neukölln met to present and discuss the Edible Cities Solutions that were elaborated during the previous months.

ECS “Product Development”

In collaboration with the Berlin Living Lab Gutsgarten Hellersdorf the ECS aims to develop a product from locally grown ingredients with an independent brand that is to be developed. The focus here is on herbs from which tea and syrup are to be made. The herbs are grown, harvested (and processed) in the Living Lab Neukölln.

ECS “Cultural and Culinary Actions Days”

With this ECS, the numerous ideas and suggestions for including the intercultural neighborhood of the New St. Jacobi Cemetery are combined in a practical, flexible and easily accessible way. The chosen format are the action days, which are already well established on the grounds of the Jacobi cemetery. They take place during the season from March to November, once a month on Saturdays and are therefore well suited for neighborhood participation. Several activities can take place at the same time on a day of action, e.g. horticultural and craft activities or cultural and culinary activities.

ECS “Cemetery Conversion and Mourning Culture”

This ECS is intended to positively accompany and shape the fundamental and for some cemetery visitors certainly difficult change that is currently taking place on the cemetery area. Why are cemetery areas in Berlin closed? What does it mean when parts of a 150-year-old cemetery gradually become an urban garden? How can the uniqueness of the place be preserved? How much life and activity is actually conceivable in a cemetery? How can we go new ways together with those who grieve? Death and transience are omnipresent in a cemetery, but also in the vegetable patch and in the field. Can death and life be experienced as mutually dependent and complementary aspects? Can gardening with mourners be a way of gently coping with pain? From these and similar questions, the desire arises to deal more intensively with the topics of cemetery conversion and the culture of mourning within the framework of an ECS.

ECS “Research Center for Urban Environments”

This ECS deals with the possibilities of integrating neighborhood and research into an ecological and social cemetery conversion. This could be implemented in the form of an environmental education center on the topics of ecology and cemetery conversion.

On June 21st the new event stage at the Berlin Living Lab Gutsgarten Hellersdorf was officially opend during the annual music festival Fête de la Musique. The stage was constructed in the weeks before together with the active participants of the community garden and served a great performing space for the music acts of the evening.

Also at this event, our team was able to present the project to interested people.

On June 19th the 4th monthly actions day as part of the Edible Cities Solution “Cultural and Culinary Actions Days” in the Berlin Living Lab Neukölln took place. Despite the high temperatures volunteers joined the team to make the year’s first tea herb harvest of mint and lemon balm and prepared them for the drying process and tea production. Further the team produced some liters of summer savory syrup – a local homemade and delicious product that later can be purchased at the garden’s café.

In addition, the EdiCitNet communications team had a stand there in Berlin to inform the local community about the Living Lab and the work in the project. Visitors were introduced to the project in a playful way with Planting2Go (planting action with seeds to take home).

On the 21st of April 2021 a non-public workshop was given for the members of the neighborhood management program in Berlin. During this half-day event, the participants increased their knowledge about climate change adaptation and mitigation measures through edible cities solutions. The aim of this workshop was to engage the participants in edible cities solutions and to decrease barriers for their implementation.

In the first part of the workshop, the innovation project EdiCitNet was introduced. After that, a presentation about the benefits of edible cities solutions for climate change adaptation was given. Three different presentations by the president of the allotment gardeners in Berlin, PRINZ and Bundesverband GebäudeGrün e.V. (BuGG) looked more closely at the practical implementation of edible cities solutions in Berlin.

In the end, different ideas for edible cities solutions and the next workshops were brainstormed in small groups.

We are glad to inform you that the Performance assessment tool, available in the EdiCitNet toolbox web interface (https://toolbox.edicitnet.com/assessment/) has been improved.

One of the main novelties is that users can check out the TOP 10 Edible City Solutions (ECS) in terms of their performance regarding sustainability, urban challenges, and ecosystem services. Moreover, the TOP 10 ECS can also be organized by typology of ECS (e.g. private gardens, community gardens, community kitchens, local markets).

Another novelty is that users can explore the performance of a specific ECS or compare it with other ECS in terms of Sustainability, urban challenges, and ecosystem services. In addition, if you are interested to know more about this ECS, you can easily access their PROFILES from the performance assessment interface. Also, all the data concerning the performance assessment is public available in j.son and excel formats.

EdiCitNet is planning to improve even more the assessment tool. To do so, the tool will allow user to filter ECS per city, and thus explore, compare, and check the top 10 ECS per city.

The performance assessment tool is public and does not require registration to be used. Nevertheless, we kindly invite representatives of Edible City Solutions to create their profiles in the toolbox, and thus help us to expand the edible network, promote knowledge transfer and built together the most compressive database of Edible City Solutions. Please, let us know if you need help.

A new handbook published by the European Commission provides decision-makers and practitioners with a comprehensive NBS impact assessment framework and a robust set of indicators and methodologies to help them assess the impact of nature-based solutions across 12 different societal challenge areas.

The handbook, entitled “Evaluating the impact of nature-based solutions”, which was published on Wednesday May 5, includes contributions from EdiCitNet, alongside 16 other EU-funded NBS projects and collaborating institutions.

A number of EdiCitNet partners, including city administrations from the Front-Runner Cities and an interdisciplinary group of research partners from a a broad variety of scientific disciplines, contributed their experiences on NBS impact assessment and monitoring to the handbook. Drawing from information gathered throughout the project, including in particular the experiences in the EdiCitNet Living Labs, the partners offer insights on, among other things: how to match intended aims with suitable indicators, how to assist stakeholders in selecting or developing methods for data collection that are both scientifically sound and feasible in light of local personnel, knowledge, time and financial resources, and the importance of giving Edible City Solution coordinators and participants access to convenient tools for data collection, storage and management.

This new handbook has been developed as part of the European Taskforce for NBS Impact Assessment (NBS TF2) with the aim of: serving as a reference for relevant EU policies and activities, orienting urban practitioners in developing robust impact evaluation frameworks for nature-based solutions at different scales and building the European evidence base regarding NBS impacts.

Download the new handbook “Evaluating the impact of nature-based solutions” here.