Faced with increasing risks from climate change, food systems will need to transition away from dominant industrial paradigms and move towards a more sustainable way of producing, distributing, and consuming food. One solution or one side alone though might not have the desired systemic change or might not capture the full complexity of food systems. To go beyond two known criticisms of local food sustainable initiatives, i.e., to be rather small and to be developed outside policy frameworks and/or in stark opposition to current food systems, in this thesis I argue to look at governance spaces of transformation at local level where community members, professionals, and governments get together to share knowledge, deliberate, and collectively devise place-based strategies to address complex food systems issues. The thesis is divided into three chapters. To completely understand spaces of transformation, the first chapter provides a conceptual framework of analysis combining ideas from sustainability transitions, environmental governance and sustainable food communities’ approaches. With the first chapter laying out the theoretical framework, chapter 2 and 3 will rely on the empirical analysis of data gathered through interviews and surveys. The conceptualization of territorial spaces of transformation and the analysis of whether biodistricts can be considered such spaces of transformation for food systems, will be laid out in chapter 2. Chapter 3 will consider two additional research questions, namely how territorial characteristics influence the emergence of a biodistrict, and what role the biodistricts have in territorial transformations towards agroecology. The aim of the thesis is to generate solid and harmonized evidence on the impact of biodistricts on key sustainability characteristics, such as a biodiverse environment, inclusive societal and cultural values, sustainable economic development, sound governance systems and organic, regenerative agricultural practices. The results allow to develop a blueprint for biodistricts as meso-spaces, showing how the presence of actors, the objectives, activities, and governance structure should evolve according to the maturity phases. Moreover, the application of the CAET-TAPE assessment shows that the biodistricts are performing solidly on agroecological transitions.

Scholars who study grassroots innovations argue that small-scale community-led urban projects can serve as catalysts accelerating sustainability, by spreading their techniques and practices into a broader society. This thesis explores the claim by investigating influences of two Swedish eco-villages through two spheres: individual and whole eco-village project basis-influence. The study finds that living in the eco-villages helped the residents to reinforce their environmental behaviours. Also both projects had an indirect impact on the housing companies and the municipalities in light of knowledge building and inspiration. However, there was little evidence that ideas and techniques from the eco-villages were adopted by the higher institutional levels. The findings indicate a need for linking grassroots urban projects to municipal programmes.