On September 16^th, 2025, twenty participants representing urban farms, research groups, community organizations, and policymakers came together at the University of Vienna for a half-day workshop to explore one key question:

How can Vienna harness and scale Urban Agriculture’s multifunctional benefits over the next 3 years?

This workshop, a part of the Growing Resilience with Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities (GReenSCape) project, mirrored the one previously held in Metro Manila in February 2025. This allows the GReenSCape project team to build a cross-city conversation about urban agriculture approaches, and their varied impacts on cities from climate change adaptation and community building, to developing local economies and providing novel bridges that link urban planning and governance. The Vienna workshop brought its own set of local perspectives, policy needs, and urban design questions, but the central purpose remained the same as in Manila, to collectively imagine how urban agriculture can be scaled in meaningful, grounded, and equitable ways.

To begin, each group reflected on a set of 28 Impact Cards, representing possible environmental, social, economic, infrastructure, and institutional outcomes to achieve with urban agriculture. From this full spectrum, participants could only select 14. This constraint was intentional, as it forced groups to articulate what they felt was most urgent and most realistic for Vienna, at this moment in time.

Despite the diversity of backgrounds of participants, with respect to areas of expertise, profession, and urban agriculture affiliation, there was a strong convergence. Participants emphasized environmentally responsible practices, such as circularity, biodiversity, and soil health, alongside social wellbeing, skill building, and support for developing local economies. Moreover, governance emerged as a key theme, specifically, increasing transparency around land use and decision-making processes, and the need for cohesive, science-backed policy that guides and supports the long-term integration of urban agriculture throughout Vienna.

This first step helped establish a collective sense of direction, grounding the discussion in a shared vision of what ‘success’ should look like.

The next step invited participants to transform aspirations into concrete activities. Based on a set of guiding questions, participants collaboratively developed a diverse range of activities they saw as important for achieving their vision of success. A range of creative and inspiring activities emerged, from hands-on community initiatives like composting programs, shared gardens, and intercultural food events, to the development of governance strategies, digital planning and monitoring tools, and education initiatives.

What was striking was how multifunctional these activities became, as participants reflected on which specific impacts they may help achieve: a community garden not only helps improve food and nutrition security, but also acts as an education site, while a cooperative kitchen becomes also a cultural space, a digital platform doubles as a community coordination tool, and land tenure models show potential to strengthen both governance and equity.

These activities showed that urban agriculture in Vienna is understood not simply as producing vegetables, but as an integral part of sustainable urban development and planning, that currently, has a magnitude of untapped potential.

In the final step, participants were introduced to different ways activities could be scaled, including scaling up (reaching more people with existing activities), deep (strengthening the impact of existing activities), wide (expanding to new geographic areas), across (extending impacts into new sectors), and soft (transforming values, mindsets, and narratives).

This was more than a technical exercise, as groups were asked to think carefully about what growth in terms of urban agriculture practices should look like, and what resources, actors, and support would be required to achieve such. Should a project get bigger, be replicated, become more deeply embedded in a neighborhood, or connect more with schools, parks, and health programs? Each requires a different approach, set of resources, and pathway forward.

This framework helped participants move beyond the assumption that scaling only means expansion. While most activities can be scaled in several ways, various themes emerged. Community-based projects often needed to scale deep, for example, by strengthening relationships, before being scaled up or wide. Planning tools and digital systems were ideal for scaling across into governance, retail, education, or climate policy. Cultural and educational activities showed strong potential for scaling soft, shifting norms, and reconnecting people with food and nature.

It became clear that Vienna’s urban agriculture ecosystem does not need a single strategy, but instead, a portfolio of scaling approaches that reflect different strengths, actors, and forms of value.

Taken together, the results show a community that came together during this workshop, that sees urban agriculture as far more than growing food. Participants described it as a connector, linking neighborhoods communities, schools, public institutions, digital tools, and everyday cultural practices. Instead of a single pathway forward, the workshop revealed a rich landscape of possibilities, each requiring different forms of scaling to match Vienna’s diverse needs and ambitions.

We warmly thank all the workshop participants for their time and inspiring insights.