Table 1 List of Case Studies

1. Analysis of how policies and practices around school canteens interact based on observations of schools in a small township.

Anthropology researcher

Policies and practices surrounding school canteens with different goals (i.e., student nutrition, promotion of small businesses, and school finances) have been set independently of each other. While they make sense independently, they are incoherent together, undermining nutritional value of school canteen food.

2. Challenges in changing diets in Malaysia to combat rise in diabetes.

Health policy researchers

Health promotion through informational campaigns needs to be accompanied by strategies that address societal and environmental drivers of food consumption and physical activity.

3. Sustaining urban rejuvenation efforts in a financially limited locality.

Officers from an organisation funding and facilitating urban rejuvenation efforts

When urban rejuvenation efforts are coupled with a locally appropriate strategy for engaging communities and developing cross-sector partnerships, resources can be unlocked for maintaining improvements and initiating new efforts.

4. A university botanic garden’s challenge in maintaining conservation and education missions as university institutional priorities and funding shift.

University researcher and living laboratory programme officer

To maintain its mission, the botanic garden needs to re-evaluate who it considers as its key stakeholders and reorient its activities and focus to cultivate those relationships.

5. Competing paradigms within a university of the value of its undeveloped land, and the challenge of maintaining green spaces in urban centres.

University administration leader and living laboratory programme officer

To secure university green spaces, institutional paradigms and sustainable land use must be strengthened. To achieve this, linkages must be made between conservation and other core values and priorities the university holds.

6. Technological and community approaches to river clean-up and maintenance.

Civil society advocates and university researcher

Technology appears to offer predictable and easily implementable solutions to state and local authorities dealing with pollution issues. However, when this is the sole solution, communities are disempowered and become disengaged, strengthening paradigms that lead to increased pollution.

7. Bike-sharing as part of an integrated public-transit solution.

Private sector bike-sharing company

Barriers to cycling are lowered when there is a critical mass of cyclists such that driver-awareness and road infrastructure change to accommodate cycling. Bike-sharing companies can play a role in overcoming initial barriers such that this critical mass can be reached.