From the Global Food System to the Local Dimension: The Urban Food Strategies

Abstract

European and global policies are increasingly moving towards new frontiers of sustainability, innovation and social inclusion. Many of the 2030 SDGs promoted by the UN, to which should refer all planning for the future development of cities, focus on urban food systems and waste food loss. Recently, alongside the forms of reaction activated by organized civil society, experiments related to the so-called urban food policies, linked with holistic urban approaches, in which cities are configured as new actors in the food systems, are spreading internationally. The big news compared to this type of approach, of a punctual and sectorial type, is represented by the promotion by cities of real integrated and multi-sectorial food strategies (Urban Food Strategies, UFS), characterized by a holistic approach to supply chains of development through eco-efficient cycles linked with multidimensional agro-food systems and the multidimensionality of food. The article focuses on understanding how the holistic agro-cultural and social systems intercept spaces, actors, re-sources and dynamics present in a city, moving from the food system to promote a new kind the of agro-urban integrated system of where innovative food and multi-scalar approaches are combined.