Proposals should address the following four issues and be targeted to help at least 5 cities/towns lacking integrated food systems policies to take ambitious and decisive action:

1. Understanding: map local food systems, policies and actions, with a special focus on assessing short supply chains and urban food environments (including harmful marketing and advertising and unequal access to healthy food for the urban poor), and on developing local indicators and monitoring frameworks.
   This should be built on existing tools such as the “Food systems dashboard framework” and should include the development of food systems stakeholder maps, maps of the formal and informal food flows and retail channels and, especially relevant in case of food shock crisis, maps identifying the most vulnerable people and their access to nutritious food. This should include analysing the local responses to emergencies and take into account the environmental, social and economic dimension.
2. Governance: develop and evaluate innovative, multi-actor, urban food systems governance processes and capacities for science-backed integrated policy making and implementation actions that deliver on farm to fork strategy objectives and Food 2030 co-benefits for health, environment, climate, circularity and inclusion, while minimizing trade-offs. Special attention should be given to improving food environments, providing increased food access to vulnerable groups and fostering short supply chains.
3. Engaging: mobilise a wide diversity of food system actors from farm to fork. Higher education institutions and research centres, in particular, should be engaged to collaboration with local actors to support evidence-based food policy development and to help provide local solutions to integrated food system challenges.
4. Mutual learning: reinforce or create new networks of cities and towns to share good practices and learn from and support each other. This implies involving cities with well-developed food policies to provide guidance and lessons learned, as well as new forms of collaboration/twinning.