Mapping wild food foraging locations reveals urban green space preferences and avenues for edible city solutions

Urban wild food foraging is a ubiquitous activity that takes place in a wide variety of urban green spaces (UGS) but still receives little attention. To support urban planning to facilitate wild food foraging as an edible city solution, we aimed to understand the types and characteristics of UGS that are favoured by foragers and the spatial distribution of foraging locations. We therefore conducted a survey with 458 online and face-to-face respondents in Vienna, Austria. Urban dwellers were asked to indicate foraging locations for eight wild food species, which were mapped and analysed using a spatially explicit approach. Results revealed 1239 foraging locations on 9 different types of UGS, with forest and meadow landscapes, parks and UGS mosaics having the largest shares. Larger public UGS and public UGS that were managed less intensively were particularly conducive to foraging, whereas the vegetation structure of UGS, dog access, foraging regulations and centrality of UGS were unrelated from foraging frequencies. Contamination from traffic and dogs were the foragers' major concerns. Hotspots for foraging plant parts of shrubs and trees were more frequent and more dispersed across the city than hotspots for foraging herbaceous species. To facilitate foraging as an edible city solution, urban planning needs to enable foraging on larger public UGS, promote wild food shrubs and trees in shielded locations on smaller UGS, and lower management intensities in UGS of all sizes. • Foragers access a diversity of urban green space types but have clear preferences. • Larger as well as less intensively managed urban green spaces are preferred. • The distribution of foraging hotspots is contingent upon the plant species life forms. • Vegetation structure is not essentially associated with foraging frequencies. • Urban foraging provides arguments for urban rewilding and edible city solutions.