Table 2 Qualitative codes related to the sustained impact of the CBSD workshop from follow-up interviews with workshop participants (N = 18)

Stakeholder engagement

 Governance

References to the way decisions are made that impact how cities function including power relations

“You need, from the point of view of public policy, a structuring scope, but you also need to find alternatives so that the potential and local possibilities have more capacity and possibility to be implemented, because then you can meet local needs and take advantage of what you already have there in terms of capacities and resources of different natures”

 Easiness to take better choices

Statements about which and how multiple factors are considered when making health individual choices easier

“It really means having access to environments, spaces, that facilitate your options. We have been working on this a lot from the perspective of health promotion, from the point of view of building these environments, which supports decisions and does not blame or hold the individual responsible for their choices”

“May it be easy to live, let it be easy to get around, eat, practice the basic functions of everyday life. Anyway, I think that the healthy environment, or healthy urban environments are those that are organized in a way that they contribute to these processes and do not hinder it”

“A space where the healthiest choice is the easiest choice for people”

Shared language and understanding of problem

 Broader definition of health

Descriptions of more encompassing definitions of health and well-being

“Environments that are able to contribute to the individual's integral health. For this environment to exist, there is a need, for example, to care for mental health, for the acquisition and type of food that these individuals are going to consume, a relationship with travel time, form of travel, transit mobility”

 Enabling environments

References to built environment features to improve urban health

“For me the healthy environment has corners, there are open-air markets, there are places where people, pedestrians, meet. It is a landmark, an indicator that the space is healthy is that it has a square, it has possibilities of meeting others”

“I consider [healthy] a city that has good sidewalks, a continuous, connected cyclepath, with people exchanging a car trip for an active trip, the air was going to be more breathable, people were going to exercise, they would be healthier”

“It is not only how it is built, but the way we take ownership of it and use it, how much of it promotes a healthy life”

Interconnections

 Urban–rural connectivity

References to interdependencies between urban and rural areas impacting urban health

“So the idea that I can see transportation as a mean, due to its interaction with all other urban activities, it can be a facilitator, including an inducer of these processes of condensation and spatial sharing”

“A whole connection between the food distribution network and the transport network, it's a connection that we didn't think about and started to think”

“How food is taken, transported from production areas, from farms, to drainage, distribution”

 Links between sectors, regions and processes

Statements about the connections across and between different levels of influence in the ecological model

“Understanding healthy environments it is to expand that the city promoting health is not only physical activity, it is not only air quality, it is also having access to healthy food, it is also in this sense urban agriculture, which is to have urban, metropolitan food, you have a healthy diet nearby”

 Built environment features

Statements about how the built environment facilitates or hinders interconnections between people or between people and their needs

“That the space does not create barriers for the person to live their life well. May it be easy to move around, easy to have fun, easy to find what they seek, be it services or products (…). For me, a healthy urban space promotes meetings. It is organized in such a way that people can somehow live together (…). So for me the healthy space has corners, there is a street market, there is a place where people, pedestrians, meet. It is a milestone, an indicator that the space is healthy is that it has a square, it has possibilities of meeting”

Dialogue across sectors

 Sharing perspectives

Statements about sharing perspectives with other participants

“It was the question of time, the discussion of healthy eating has to do with time, with the screen time we lose, with the time to buy, with the time to process, with the time to tidy up, to work on the food through time”

“I think that understanding the time dedicated to the purchase of food, to eating well, to producing less processed foods and to understand that this time is also the time that we lose when travelling, in urban mobility, a conflict of time dispute”

 Bridging distinct perspectives for deeper understanding

References to changes or refinements to perspectives

“We had a discussion about urban spreading and densifying, which was an approach I had never thought of. I had a vision that the less dense the city was, the better, it would be nice for people to live far away, have space, be calm”

“The workshop did something that it should always have, right, which is this integration of completely different audiences, who think completely different policies and how they interact, so this, as far as I have followed along the way, was a total innovation of the workshop, in linking a group that discusses urban mobility policy with a group that discusses healthy eating. At first it was difficult for us to find out what the connection was, then we found several”

“We were able to find these very strong relationships between food and urban mobility, mainly because through mobility you make the consumer have access to better food. And also the relationship between the food that people have, how they eat, and the very practice of eating they choose”

“The exercises, those different moments, the degree of diversity and detail that we managed to achieve, of course within the limits of an exercise, but anyway, the variety of links and solutions that we found was something extremely interesting, that I think it was a very precious thing, even more in terms of our agenda, this issue of urban supply, the issue of supply in general is a topic that is very crucial, but it is still a bit ‘gross’. Gross in the sense of the proposals we have, they are kind of classic proposals, and in the exercise we managed to come up with proposals that had a much more interesting variety in the sense of a local application, in actions that are not simple, because none of these sections they are simple, but actions very related to specific situations, so I found this very interesting, these multiple bridges that we found between food and transportation”

Use of systems thinking

 Taking ownership of the method

Ways in which systems thinking tools are (not) incorporated into professional work

“[The workshop] brought a reflection on a systemic approach for the people who were there that possibly nobody had (…) Traditionally, we tend to be one-dimensional, monothematic, and I think that this issue of bringing a perception of systemic logic for the business was nice, and that I say for myself, I would never have had it had I not been there”

“I think the method was very impressive to me. If you ask me a year from now what you will remember, I will say it for sure, even if I do not internalize it in my work”

“Since I left the workshop I had proposed myself to do a more systematic approach, with the method. I even talked to Leticia [one of the facilitators], then I even met her, right after the workshop, I asked her to give me a first steps manual (…) I did very little but it is something ‘on my radar’"