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Shaping Thriving Foodscapes

Reading time

5 minutes

Date

07.04.2025

Credit: Gehl

Thriving Foodscapes 

The Thriving Foodscape Approach considers the role that the built environment can play in promoting a paradigm shift in our food system — moving away from a world where the design of our cities harms our health and damages the planet, and towards one where our neighborhoods encourage healthy and environmentally sustainable lifestyles. With a range of methods designed to understand the relationship between food availability, the built environment, and human behavior, this approach can identify the barriers to healthy behaviors that exist in our neighbourhoods — and what we can do about it. The approach envisions a future where all neighborhoods make it easy for people to develop healthy habits and routines around food in our cities.

We combine data-driven analysis with on-the-ground observations and conversations to understand how food behaviors unfold in everyday urban life. By engaging communities and key stakeholders, we uncover opportunities for the built environment to better support healthy routines.
Our design process focuses on experiences and narratives, ensuring that the communities we work with see themselves reflected in the solutions. Through participatory engagement, we co-create shared understanding that can inspire collective action to drive meaningful change.
We implement neighborhood-scale interventions that make healthy food more accessible, dignified, and affordable. Our co-created Healthy Neighborhood Strategies include targeted policy shifts and pilot projects that lay the groundwork for long-term transformation.
Measuring impact is key to our approach. By continuously assessing how design interventions influence food behaviors and public health, we help cities integrate foodscapes into broader urban strategies for systemic change.
Our impact

See Thriving Foodscapes in action in Lisbon…

city partners trained in masterclasses

10

projects across eight countries

9

visits to the Thriving Foodscapes website 

8800

Learn more on Thriving Foodscapes

Thriving Foodscapes is the digital home of this body of work. You will find expanded documentation on the methodology, access the open-source tools, and read case studies to see how this approach is applied in real neighborhoods.

Visit Thriving Foodscapes

The role of the Thriving Foodscapes approach is to turn the complex, often quantitative problems of urban food systems into relatable, human challenges and opportunities.

Olivia Flynn, Senior Designer

The public realm poses a challenge to healthy food access in peripheral neighborhoods of Bogotá. Steep terrain, lack of transportation, and limited healthy food offerings make it difficult for Bogotanos to access the fresh produce needed to cook at home. The nature of the public realm forces people to rely on processed and fast food that is more accessible and heavily advertised. Credit: Gehl

Working across silos to address Bogotá’s food deserts through public space improvements

  • Community Engagement
  • Social Spatial Research
  • Urban Strategy
Ajuda residents have a median income in the bottom 30% of Lisbon’s earnings and well below the city’s average (2009). The neighborhood’s population nearly doubles daily due to the influx of university staff and students. Credit: Gehl

Improving food access in a disinvested community in Lisbon

  • Community Engagement
  • Social Spatial Research
  • Urban Strategy
Local residents visit the temporary installations and taste the edible plants in the gardens, whilst they wait for their sustainable, healthy snack from the visiting food truck. Credit: Gehl

Encouraging healthy, sustainable food behaviours in Copenhagen

  • Place Activation
  • Community Engagement
  • Social Spatial Research
Photo courtesy: Novo Nordisk

Shaping built environments to nudge healthier everyday food habits

  • Social Spatial Research
  • Urban Strategy

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We care about our client’s success, and work for long term project relationships that value continued, iterative, and lasting change.

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