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[Proceeding] Systemic Design goes between disciplines for the sustainability
in food processes and cultures
Original Citation:
Barbero, Silvia; Tamborrini, Paolo (2015). Systemic Design goes between disciplines for the
sustainability in food processes and cultures. In: 7th International AESOP SUSTAINABLE FOOD
PLANNING CONFERENCE Localizing urban food strategies Farming cities and performing rurality,
Turin, 8-9 October 2015. pp. 517-525
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LOCALIZING URBAN FOOD STRATEGIES
FARMING CITIES AND PERFORMING RURALITY
7TH INTERNATIONAL AESOP SUSTAINABLE FOOD PLANNING CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
TURIN, ITALY 7‐9 OCTOBER 2015
Edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero
Editorial coordination by Stefania Guarini, Franco Fassio, Alessia Toldo and Giacomo Pettenati
Cover image : Archivio fotografico della Città metropolitana di Torino "Andrea Vettoretti"
Published in Torino, Italy by
Politecnico di Torino
Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24, 10129, Torino ‐ ITALY
December 2015
Conference email: info@aesoptorino2015.it
Conference website: www. aesoptorino2015.it
ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6
UNIVERSITIES PROMOTERS
Politecnico di Torino (DIST)
University of Turin (Dept. CPS, DISAFA)
University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo
WITH
Consorzio Risteco Eating City International Platform 2015‐2020
IN COLLABORATION WITH
EU‐ Polis and Unesco Chair
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
AESOP and Compagnia di San Paolo
INSTITUTIONSAL PATRONAGE
CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
CO‐CHAIRMAN
Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero
AESOP SUSTAINABLE FOOD PLANNING GROUP
Andre Viljoen (Chairperson)
Arnold van der Valk (Secretary)
Coline Perrin (Phd and new researchers group)
COORDINATORS FOR THE PROMOTING INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANISATIONS
Giuseppe Cinà (Politecnico di Torino ‐ DIST)
Egidio Dansero (University of Turin ‐ CPS)
Franco Fassio (University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo)
Maurizio Mariani (Consorzio Risteco, Eating City)
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Serge Bonnefoy, Terres en Villes, Grenoble, France
Gilles Novarina, Université Pierre Mendès, Grenoble, France
Wayne Roberts, Toronto, Canada
Jan‐Willem van der Schans, Wageningen University, the Netherlands
INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Gianluca Brunori (University of Pisa, Italy); Giuseppe Cinà (Politecnico di Torino, Italy); Katrin Bohn (Bohn&Viljoen
Architects and University of Brighton), Andrea Calori (ESta' ‐ Economia e Sostenibilita, Milano, Italy); Damien Conaré
(Unesco Chair ‘Alimentations du monde’, Montpellier, France); Egidio Dansero (University of Turin, Italy); Piercarlo
Grimaldi (University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo, Italy); Jan‐Eelco Jansma (Wageningen University, the
Netherlands); Alberto Magnaghi (University of Florence, Italy); Maurizio Mariani, (Eating City, France); Davide Marino
(University of Molise, Italy); Mariavaleria Mininni (University of Basilicata, Italy); Gilles Novarina (Université Pierre
Mendès, France); Anna Palazzo (University of Rome 3, Italy); Coline Perrin (Institut National de la Recherche
Agronomique, SAD, France); Guido Santini (FAO, Rome, Italy); Arnold van der Valk (Wageningen University, the
Netherlands); Andre Viljoen (University of Brighton, UK).
LOCAL SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Franco Ajmone (DISAFA, University of Turin); Mario Artuso (DIST, Politecnico di Torino) Filippo Barbera (Dept. CPS,
University of Turin); Giancarlo Cotella (DIST, Politecnico di Torino); Francesca De Filippi (DAD, Politecnico di Torino);
Marco De Vecchi (DISAFA, University of Turin); Elena Di Bella (Città Metropolitana di Torino); Franco Fassio (University
of Gastronomic Science, Pollenzo); Federica Larcher (DISAFA, University of Turin); Dario Padovan (Dept. CPS, University
of Turin); Cristiana Peano (DISAFA, University of Turin); Marco Santangelo (DIST, Politecnico di Torino); Angioletta
Voghera (DIST, Politecnico di Torino).
SECRETARY
Gabriela Cavaglià (Unesco Chair, University of Turin); Stefania Guarini (DIST, Politecnico di Torino);
Giacomo Pettenati (Dept. CPS, University of Turin); Nadia Tecco (DISAFA, University of Turin);
Alessia Toldo (DIST, University of Turin)
ACADEMIC AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES, NETWORKS
Associazione dei Geografi Italiani ‐ AGeI, Bologna
Istvap, Istituto per la tutela e la valorizzazione dell'agricoltura periurbana, Milan
Rete Ricercatori AU Agricoltura Urbana e periurbana e della pianificazione alimentare, Italy
SdT, Società dei territorialisti, Florence
Società Geografica Italiana, Rome
Società di Studi Geografici, Florence
Terres en Villes, Grenoble
ASSOCIATIONS AND FOOD MOOVEMENTS
Federazione Provinciale Coldiretti Torino
Slow Food Piemonte e Valle d'Aosta
CONTENTS
THE 7TH AESOP SUSTAINABLE FOOD PLANNING CONFERENCE
VIII
THE AESOP SUSTAINABLE FOOD PLANNING GROUP
X
THE EATING CITY INTERNATIONAL PLATFORM
XI
SHORT SUMMARIES OF THE CONFERENCE SESSIONS
XII
TRACK 1. SPATIAL PLANNING AND URBAN DESIGN
1
Andrea Oyuela, Arnold van der Valk
Collaborative planning via urban agriculture: the case of Tegucigalpa (Honduras)
2
Magda Rich, Andre Viljoen, Karl Rich
The ‘Healing City’ – social and therapeutic horticulture as a new dimension of urban agriculture?
22
Mario Artuso
Urban agriculture, food production and city planning in a medium sized city of Turin metropolitan area: a
preliminary note which compares geography and local policies
36
Christoph Kasper, Juliane Brandt, Katharina Lindschulte, Undine Giseke
Food as an infrastructure in urbanizing regions
42
Giuseppe Cinà
Somewhere the city slows down and the country comes back. Figures of a starting change of course in many
Italian urban fringes
57
Megan Heckert, Joseph Schilling, Fanny Carlet
Greening us legacy cities—a typology and research synthesis of local strategies for eclaiming vacant land
67
Daniela Poli
Sustainailble food, spatial planning and agro‐urban public space in bioregional city
83
Andre Viljoen, Katrin Bohn
Pathways from Practice to Policy for Productive Urban Landscapes
98
Jacques Abelman
Cultivating the city: infrastructures of abundance in urban Brazil
107
Susan Parham
The productive periphery: food space and urbanism on the edge
118
Matthew Potteiger
Eating Ecologies: Integraging productive ecologies and foraging at the landscape scale
131
David Fanfani, Sara Iacopini, Michela Pasquali, Massimo Tofanelli
Sustain‐edible city: Challenges in designing agri‐urban landscape for the ‘proximity’ city. The case of Prato,
Tuscany
146
Radu Mircea Giurgiu, Fritz‐Gerald Schröder, Nico Domurath, Daniel Brohm
Vertical farms as sustainable food production in urban areas. Addressing the context of developed and developing
countries. Case study: brick born farming, Dresden, Germany
156
Dirk Wascher, Leonne Jeurissen
Metropolitan Footprint Tools for Spatial Planning. At the Example of Food Safety and Security in the Rotterdam
Region
171
Bruno Monardo, Anna Laura Palazzo
Healthy Works. Food System and Land Use Planning in San Diego Region
185
TRACK 2. GOVERNANCE AND PRIVATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
199
Lisa V. Betty
The historic and current use of social enterprise in food system and agricultural markets to dismantle the systemic
weakening of african descended communities
200
Jane Midgley
Making food valued or the value(s) of food: a study of local food governance arrangements in Newcastle, England
215
Melika Levelt
Creating space for urban farming: the role of the planning professional
226
Nadia Tecco, Federico Coppola, Francesco Sottile, Cristiana Peano
Adaptive governance or adjustment for planning and management the urban green spaces? The case of
communal and community gardens in Turin
Gaston Remmers
Cracking codes between the health care and the agrofood system: the development of a food supplement for
prostate cancer in the Netherlands
238
246
Andrea Calori
Do an urban food policy needs new institutions? Lesson learned from the Food Policy of Milan toward food policy
councils
261
Alessia Toldo, Giacomo Pettenati, Egidio Dansero
Exploring urban food strategies: four analytical perspectives and a case study (Turin)
270
TRACK 3. RELEVANT EXPERIENCES AND PRACTICES
283
284
Esther Sanyé‐Mengual, Jordi Oliver‐Solà, Juan Ignacio Montero, Joan Rieradevall
Using a multidisciplinary approach for assessing the sustainability of urban rooftop farming
Jeroen de Vries, Ruth Fleuren
A spatial typology for designing a local food system
297
Kathrin Specht, Esther Sanyé‐Mengual
Urban rooftop farming in Berlin and Barcelona: which risks and uncertainties do key stakeholders perceive?
307
Erica Giorda, Gloria Lowe
Restoring houses and restoring lives: experiments in livability in the Detroit East Side
314
Rosalba D’Onofrio, Decio Rigatti, Massimo Sargolini, Elio Trusiani
Vineyard Landscapes: a common denominator in Italian and Brazilian landscapes
324
Sergi Garriga Bosch, Josep‐Maria Garcia‐Fuentes
The idealization of a "Barcelona model" for markets renovation
336
Patricia Bon
Participatory planning for community gardens: practices that foster community engagement
343
Aurora Cavallo, D. Pellegrino, Benedetta Di Donato, Davide Marino
Values, roles and actors as drivers to build a local food strategy: the case of Agricultural Park of “Casal del
marmo”
355
Emanuela Saporito
Roof‐top orchards as urban regeneration devices. OrtiAlti case study
365
Joe Nasr, June Komisar
Rooftops as productive spaces: planning and design lessons from Toronto
374
H.C. Lee, R. Childsa, W. Hughes
Sustainable Food Planning for Maidstone, Kent, UK
381
Katrin Bohn, André Viljoen
Second nature and urban agriculture: a cultural framework for emerging food policies
391
Biancamaria Torquati, Giulia Giacchè, Chiara Paffarini
Panorama of urban agriculture within the city of Perugia (Italy)
399
Ana Maria Viegas Firmino
Learning and Tips for more Sustainable Urban Allotments in Portugal
414
Melika Levelt, Aleid van der Schrier
Logistics drivers and barriers in urban agriculture
427
TRACK 4. TRAINING AND JOBS
440
Charles Taze Fulford III, Sadik Artunc
Service‐learning and Urban Agriculture in Design Studios
441
Anna Grichting
A productive permaculture campus in the desert. Visions for Qatar University
453
Jan Richtr, Matthew Potteiger
Farming as a Tool of urban rebirth? Urban agriculture in Detroit 2015: A Case Study
463
TRACK 5. FLOWS AND NETWORKS
478
Simon Maurano, Francesca Forno
Food, territory and sustainability: alternative food networks. Development opportunities between economic crisis
and new consumption practices
479
Jean‐Baptiste Geissler
Short food supply chain and environmental “foodprint”: why consumption pattern changes could matter more
than production and distribution and why it is relevant for planning
490
Rosanne Wielemaker, Ingo Leusbrock, Jan Weijma and Grietje Zeeman
Harvest to harvest: recovering nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter via new sanitation systems for reuse in
urban agriculture
501
Silvia Barbero, Paolo Tamborrini
Systemic Design goes between disciplines for the sustainability in food processes and cultures
517
Gianni Scudo, Matteo Clementi
Local productive systems planning tools for bioregional development
526
Fanqi Liu
Eating as a planned activity: an ongoing study of food choice and the built environment in Sydney
540
Egidio Dansero, Giacomo Pettenati
Alternative Food Networks as spaces for the re‐territorialisation of food. The case of Turin
552
Franco Fassio
Cultural events as “complex system” in their territorial relationships: the case study of the Salone Internazionale
del Gusto and Terra Madre
566
Michael Andrew Robinson Clark, Jason Gilliland
Mapping and analyzing the connections and supply chains of an Alternative Food Network in London, Canada
574
Salvatore Pinna
Agricultural landscape protection and organic farming ethics: the role of Alternative Food Networks in spatial
planning. A case study from Spain
591
UNESCO CHAIR SPECIAL SESSION
605
YOUNG RESEARCHERS AND PHD WORKSHOP
607
POSTER SESSION
611
The 7th AESOP SUSTAINABLE FOOD PLANNING CONFERENCE
One of the main goals of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) (www.aesop‐planning.eu/) is
to acquire “a leading role and entering its expertise into ongoing debates and initiatives regarding planning
education and planning qualifications of future professionals". In this frame, the AESOP thematic group
“Sustainable Food Planning” (www.aesop‐planning.eu/blogs/en_GB/sustainable‐food‐planning) find its
rationale recognizing that “Fashioning a sustainable food system is one of the most compelling challenges of
the 21st Century. Because of its multi‐functional character, food is an ideal medium through which to design
sustainable places, be they urban, rural or peri‐urban places. For all these reasons, food planning is now
bringing people together from a wide range of backgrounds, including planners, policy‐makers, politicians,
designers, health professionals, environmentalists, farmers, food businesses, gastronomists and civil society
activists among many others”.
In 2015, after having been hosted in England, Wales, Germany, France and the Netherlands through out this
time providing a unique forum for cross disciplinary and interdisciplinary exchanges, the 7th Annual
Conference of the AESOP thematic group SFP has been held in Torino, Italy (October, 7‐9).
The Torino Conference (Localizing urban food strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality) aimed at
exploring new frontiers of education and research, drawing inspiration by policies and practices already
implemented or still in progress, and in the meantime bringing advancement over some key issues already
tackled during previous SFP conferences.
To this end, Localizing urban food strategies implied to relate education and research as well as policies and
practices, to the national, regional and local levels, not only as administrative scales but as physical and cultural
contexts in which food discourses have a deep influence on urban and regional planning agendas.
In this light Localizing meant:
to connect scales of discourse and action: how we can promote, co‐produce, analyze and compare urban
food strategies in different places, linked together by common goals of SFP that valorise the role of local
territories and policies, but also by global food networks that have a strong geopolitical power on local
contexts.
to better understand the possible contribution of the different places in building a glocal discourse on
food planning, in line with the general debate brought forward by United Nations agencies (i.e. UNCHS
and other agencies and networks) on the localization of Sustainable Development Goals after 2015;
to stress the role of the local dimension, remaining conscious, on the one hand, of the risk of “local
traps” and, on the other hand, of the isomorphism of a flat world in which “local” is mostly a rhetoric
behind the so‐called “green washing” process;
to build a local insight in which the different disciplines and knowledge are re‐connected by re‐
considering food systems: scholars and practitioners are called to apply their theoretical and operational
perspectives in order to frame and perform in local terms their idea on urban food strategies.
In general terms, the Conference focused on the following goals:
to reinforce the struggle for food safety and the environmental protection in the Global North and
South;
to provide a proper insight on how current training and research programs meet the new challenges of
food planning in different countries and cultural contexts;
to shape the key perspectives which food planning must deal with: governance, disciplinary innovation,
social inclusion, environmental sustainability;
to consolidate the network of planning practitioners, policymakers, scholars and experts dealing with
SFP in Europe and beyond.
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More in detail the following issues have been addressed:
how to develop a social and spatial strategy aimed at the achievement of a SFP and to answer to the
specific conditions of different urban/metropolitan contexts;
how to provide a thorough technological innovation able not only to orient global responses towards
food security but also to enable locally appropriate solutions that take into account ecosystem cycles;
how to develop food planning policies able to connect in a multilevel governance approach the different
scales from micro (urban districts) to city‐region and to national and international food policies;
how to secure a more important role for farmers as basic stakeholders of food planning;
how to sustain a broader inclusion of food planning issues in the research and the educational system,
connecting knowledge and disciplines from urban, rural and food studies in building a new planning
domain.
The conference in numbers
The papers presented in these proceedings have been selected by a group of experts being part of the scientific
committee. We received 118 abstract proposals of which the scientific committee selected 84 while 65 of them
were presented at the Conference. Moreover, the poster Session included 24 contributions. The present
proceedings include 49 full papers.
Transcriptions of key‐note presentations (by Serge Bonnefoy, Gilles Novarina, Wayne Roberts, Jan‐Willem van
der Schans), the special guest speech (by Carlo Petrini) and the opening remarks are not included in the
following proceedings. However, video recording of these interventions and of the overall Conference are
available on the Conference website
(http://www.aesoptorino2015.it/the_videos) and on the AesopTorino2015 YouTube channel.
Our heartfelt thanks go to all those who have contributed in making the 7th AESOP conference on Sustainable
Food Planning a success.
We are thankful to all the students and the volunteers that supported us before, during and after the
conference and in particular to: Francesca Basile, Silvia Borra, Alessandra Michi, Ginevra Sacchetti, Stefania
Mancuso, Valeria Squadrito, Sara Muzzarelli, Simone Pirruccio, Alberto Keller, Elisa Gemello, Chiara Marchetto,
Chiara Fratucello, Giulia Franchello, Rossella Bianco, Tatiana Altavilla, Alessandra Rauccio, Matteo Faltieri,
Lorenzo Bottiglieri, Filippo Bolognesi, Roberta Garnerone, Alberto Cena, Silvia Zucchermaglia, Andrea Aimar,
Andrea Coletta, Yaiza Di Biase, Alessandro Ventura e Ramona Manisi.
The Editors
Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero
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THE AESOP SUSTAINABLE FOOD PLANNING GROUP
Since establishing the Sustainable Food Planning Group in 2009, we have been interested in building cross
disciplinary dialogues between practitioners, academics and activists concerned with developing equitable,
sustainable, healthy and enriching food systems.
Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, who have planned and designed this 7th AESOP sustainable food planning
conference, continue to pursue this aim, so that once again we see an expanding and dynamic community of
practice.
Turin, with its close connections to the Slow Food Moment, the Milan South Agricultural Park and the Milan
EXOP 2015 “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” resonates with our interests in real world issues, for example
how to translate individual practices into policy.
Alongside our strong multidisciplinary focus we have a particular strength in the age and gender profile of our
participants, presenting a unique opportunity for building future capacity. To that end the Sustainable Food
Planning Group wishes to consolidate our network by putting in place a more clearly defined framework for
electing committee members and, as a priority, expanding our “new and emerging researchers’ group”. This
process has been initiated during the conference.
I would like to thank our secretary Arnold van der Valk and our new and emerging researchers’ group co‐
coordinator Coline Perrin for their invaluable and reliable input.
And we look forward to the 8th Sustainable Food planning Conference, being co‐ordinated and hosted by
Michael Roth at Nuertingen‐Geislingen University, in Germany, between the 21st and 24th of September 2016.
Finally to see live keynote presentations go to: http://www.aesop‐planning.eu/blogs/en_GB/sustainable‐food‐
planning and to access the Sustainable Food Planning Group’s website which includes information about earlier
conferences go to: http://www.aesop‐planning.eu/blogs/en_GB/sustainable‐food‐planning.
Chair of the AESOP Sustainable Food Planning Group
Andre Viljoen
December 2015
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THE EATING CITY INTERNATIONAL PLATFORM
Who is Risteco
Risteco was born as the environmental department of the Italian SME Sotral S.r.l., a company specialized in
food transport and logistic services for public catering. Risteco has then become a no‐profit consortium in
2005, which gathers actors working in support services to catering industry.
Aware that economical development is compatible with suitable environmental quality, Risteco has assumed
the following mission: the formulation of public catering development strategies based on the improvement of
communication between stakeholders and on the results of technical and scientific innovation, land aiming at
the integration between environment, social responsibility and Human Work.
The main objective of Risteco is “to promote the sustainable development in Public catering". Risteco
especially aims, evidencing economical returns, to share its own conviction that it is possible and advantageous
to work according to ethics and sustainable development principles.
Risteco pursues its goals by creating a meeting platform “Eating City” with other professional sectors such as
scientific communities, institutions, associations etc. to promote sustainable development within food services
according to Life Cycle Thinking approach.
The ideal place where Food, Health and Environment meet Business
Our Vision
To handle Food issues, Cities must revise their usual competences. To do so, they need to build up a vision in
which feeding people shifts from its mere definition to a more systemic understanding.
Indeed, food is not only a sum of calories and nutrients necessary to make our body working, but it is
embedded in a whole system that influences our quality of life and includes all activities and actors necessary
to grow, harvest, process, package, transport, market, consume, and dispose food and all food‐related items.
This life‐cycle thinking approach allows to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes
possible to identify all food‐related activities and infrastructures in and out the city and to design an
organization chart that connects all stakeholders and infrastructures involved in the food supply chain, giving
them a role and a responsibility.
Through a deep cultural change, Cities Food Policies may turn food into a thread to connect all the main
competences of the cities related to economic development, education, health, environment, solidarity,
culture and leisure, governance, but it can also give consistency to a synergic osmosis between cities and
adjacent territories.
Our Process
Deeply convinced that all activities related to food production and consumption are essential for the
sustainable development of cities, Risteco aims, with the project “Eating city”, to carry on the dialogue, in
order to foster long term vision of public & and private decision makers on the future of sustainable urban food
supply chains worldwide.
In short, Eating City platform designs a road map to contribute to the construction of a new economic
paradigm that aims to place again human labor at the center of economy and to consider the environment
among the entrepreneurial decision variables, in order to develop a new culture of doing Business.
Eating City process moves forward through the summer campus, thematic workshops and conferences.
www.eatingcity.org
Wwinfoon 3 main pillars : Food Production, Food Consumption and Human Labour.
Maurizio Mariani
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SHORT SUMMARIES OF THE CONFERECE SESSIONS
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TRACK 1 / SESSION B
Cristoph Kasper spoke about 'Food as an infrastructure in Urbanizing Regions', the sequel to a comprehensive
research project exploring the genesis and promotion of urban agriculture conducted in the city of Casablanca.
The proposed research design met with approval in the audience. Urban agricultural in a regional perspective is
an emerging topic which attracts much attention from organisations such as FAO and RUAF. In the second
presentation Giuseppe Cinà focused on the blurring of the traditional rural‐urban nexus. Only too often
agriculture is considered to be the left‐over in a process of deliberation about the future prospects of
metropolitan regions. Some observers in the audience provided illustrations of the need to consider the
interests of agriculture in the context of urban planning in other European countries such as the Netherlands
and the UK. The ongoing conference opens windows on an issue which merits attention of the EU. One
obstacle is the isolation of different aspects in separate policy sectors such as agriculture, environment,
transportation and economics. Fanny Carlet, the third speaker in this slot, presented the results of her research
of urban agriculture as an element of greening strategies in American cities which have to cope with industrial
brownfields, so‐called Legacy Cities. Urban agriculture is perceived as an effective strategy to reclaim vacant
lots in the inner city. Well known examples are the city of Detroit and the city of Buffalo.
The last speaker was Daniela Poli who presented the results of her research on Sustainable Food and Spatial
Planning in the context of agro‐urban public space in Italy. She focuses on the bio‐regional dimension of
regional urban development. In this session disparate perspectives on urban agriculture were discussed. The
common threat was the shared conviction that agriculture is an emerging field of study and planning in the
context of regional spatial planning.
Arnold van der Valk
TRACK 1 / SESSION C
During the session different visions, policies and practices concerning the design and the planning of urban and
peri‐urban agriculture have been discussed.
The two first presentations addressed some distinct but convergent experiences. That of Andre Viljoen and
Katrin Bohn, based on a set of various interventions spread out in the porosity of the contemporary city (brown
field, vacant areas, unused areas etc.) was related to the line of research developed around the concept of
‘continuous productive landscape’, today fostered by an international network. In particular, the speakers gave
a short account on how policies and practices at various levels have impacted and still are influencing on the
implementation of six European urban agriculture projects, led mainly by architects, artists and researcher
activists, and how these experiences can help to identify future pathways to enhance a productive urban
landscape infrastructure.
Differently, in her presentation Susan Parham specially focused on some issues of urban periphery of
burgeoning conurbations, arguing that in order to support ‘gastronomic landscapes’ as well as to remake the
edge of conurbation space, a new range of design‐based tools is now available. These new tools, also based on
retrofitting techniques, can address food‐centred sprawl repair and give an upgraded role to spatial design in
supporting productive peripheries.
The following two contributions introduced two additional approaches to productive urban landscapes. In the
presentation of Matthew Potteiger what mattered was not so much about activating a productivity starting
from scratch, but rather to 'use' the existing one by integrating ‘productive ecologies and foraging’ at the
landscape scale. To this end the findings of an ethnographic research on urban foraging in Syracuse, NY, were
presented and some proper strategies responding to the opportunities for urban foraging and productive
ecologies were discussed.
Also Jaques Abelman addressed its research toward the use of the resources of local ecology (or
‘infrastructures of abundance’) in urban Brasil, but in this case he clearly adopted a design strategy by
proposing a network of urban agriculture typologies consistent with the nature of Puerto Alegre. In this frame,
by emphasizing the fruitful connections between agro‐forestry and native species, a basis for dialogue among
potential stakeholders as catalysts for future projects is created; as a result the landscape architecture project
become a mediator in processes aiming at envisioning just and sustainable urban and peri‐urban agriculture.
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In the final presentation, by adopting a point of view focused on both food issues and land use planning, Bruno
Monardo and Anna Laura Palazzo proposed a further insight on a territorial based approach. In this frame the
authors discussed the case study of San Diego Region (CA), showing how the goals of a sustainable food system
are addressed by a set of instruments ranging from food policies to land use tools and zoning codes, mobilizing
from the very beginning the community at large: producers, brokers, consumers. So doing, the case study is
discussed looking at some effective tools and operational aspects but also prompting for new meanings and
uses for vacant land.
Summing up, the presented experiences showed on the one hand the increasing set of policies and practises
underway in several countries, and on the other hand the work in progress of research in drawing attention to
the big potentialities of urban and territorial resources for a sustainable agriculture.
Giuseppe Cinà
TRACK 1 / SESSION D
Over the last decades the urban and the rural have become increasingly difficult to differentiate. Yet, both the
powerful cultural resonance of such distinction and the traditional separation between human and natural
sciences have led, even when tackling matters such as urban growth and open space strategies, to the
supremacy of the “standpoint of the City”, providing unvarying interpretations of the urban fringe as a mere
receptacle for sprawl.
Empirical evidence shows that these transformations can less and less be interpreted as transitions from low‐
density patterns towards an overall urban condition in the sense we are used to think of.
Open space proves the main asset in sustainable food policies, while remaining crucial for biodiversity
enhancement, protection of natural and spatial values, soil protection, promotion of open‐air facilities for
leisure time.
Thus, urban farming is going to play a role that goes far beyond that of supplying essential food products, while
counteracting rural unemployment. A common denominator is social integration, which is a fundamental
element in any regeneration process. Relevant work from this point of view was done by the Italian
“Territorialist” School that, for some time now, has been working on community‐building processes through an
active participation in decision‐making related to sustainability issues of our living environments.
In this session, along with local healthy food concerns, the point is to come to grips with an idea of resilience
embedding spatial coherence and landscape connectivity both at the local and territorial scale.
The first paper, "Sustain‐edible city: Challenges in designing agri‐urban landscape for the ‘proximity’ city" by
David Fanfani, Sara Iacopini, Michela Pasquali, Massimo Tofanelli, explores residual farmland in the urban
fringe of Prato and stresses its effectiveness both in giving shape to rurban areas and in providing commodities
to the Italian and Chinese communities settled in the City.
The second paper, “A Metropolitan Footprint Tool for Spatial Planning”, by D.M Wascher and Leonne Jeurissen,
explores the ecological footprint in the Rotterdam Region. The contribution stresses that food production and
consumption is not only linked via one‐directional food chains in terms of processing and logistic pathways, but
also part of cross‐sectoral and hence multidirectional value chains associated with bio‐economy.
The third paper, “Vertical farms as sustainable food production in urban areas”, by Radu Mircea Giurgiu, Fritz‐
Gerald Schröder, Nico Domurath, introduces to Vertical Farming, which allows for high construction and
operating costs, in exchange for high quality and quantity of fresh food all year round.
The fourth paper, “The potential of peri‐urban and ecotonal areas in resilience strategies design. Milano
metropolitan panorama and perspectives”, by Angela Colucci, intercepts a wide range of initiatives tackling
resilience and challenging collective perceptions, planning standards and rules regarding food management
strategies.
What new insights can we draw from this review?
Conceptually speaking, the core problem is to bridge the privileges of the urban condition ‐ the sharing of social
and civic value ‐ with the benefits of the countryside ‐ a better living environment, a healthier lifestyle, and also
a level of “naturalness” on the outskirts of the city. In practical terms, the “shape‐giving” potential of the
ongoing experiences is still to be explored and assessed, along with the different rurban patterns. Beyond the
consideration that a “good form” is a vehicle for a healthy ecological system, these experiences offer a “case‐
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by‐case” set of arguments against the “individualistic” centrifugal impulse related to urban sprawl and convey
all‐pervasive practices of re‐appropriation.
Anna Laura Palazzo
TRACK 2 / SESSION A
Positioning within the broader sphere of sustainable food governance, the session aimed at reflecting upon the
role of food policies in addressing social, cultural and economic dynamics. The contributions presented during
the session focused on various issues, as the conditions of Afro‐American community in the United States, the
actual political implications of New York City’s food policy and the configuration and self‐reproduction of food
governance regimes in Newcastle (UK).
More in detail, in her analysis of the historic and current use of social enterprise in food system and agricultural
markets in the North‐East of the United States, Lisa V. Betty focused on the role of the latter as a potential
antidote to the systemic weakening of African descended communities. The author did this by exploring the
historical relevance and current necessity for grassroots social enterprise and entrepreneurship, from the base
of underserved communities overwhelmed by hyper‐incarceration and underemployment, to support the
production of community empowering capital with prospects for economic growth in food system and
agricultural markets. She analyzed various organizations that are at the forefront of supporting and advocating
for employment training and entrepreneurship support, policy changes, community development, and
empowerment for correctional controlled individuals and underserved communities of African descent through
the alignment of solutions for individual and community development with food system advocacy.
On his hand, Nevin Cohen proposed a thorough analysis of New York food policy under mayor De Blasio as a
way to promote social equity in the city. He argues that, whereas an increasing number of US mayors have
responded to widening economic disparities and increasing attention to racial discrimination by adopting
populist political agendas, an important question for food planners is whether and to what extent this political
shift has affected the urban food systems. As the proposed case illustrates, food policy appears to be shaped
by governance networks including stakeholders who have interests in maintaining the status quo, and
therefore contribute to hinder policy change together with other factors as budget scarcity, established laws
and programs, entrenched agency conventions, competing political priorities and existing state and federal
regulations. As a result, food policies and programs developed by the Bloomberg administration continue
largely unaltered, demonstrating the complexities of redesigning food policy to fit different political priorities.
A third contribution by Jane Midgley focused on local food governance arrangements in Newcastle, paying
particular attention to recent changes regarding different actors’ perceptions and involvement with the
potential creation of a holistic food policy for the city. The paper highlights the important role played by
external elements as funding bodies, government targets, evaluation mechanisms etc. in stimulating local food‐
related policy initiatives. Even though external conditions may change over time, the appropriateness and
awareness of food may be more continuous than at first appears. The linkages to existing policy areas and
associated support (i.e. public health) appear to be initial facilitators of food policy debates within existing
policymaking structures but also potential framework constrains due to their association with other more
powerful discourses (e.g.: obesity and the associated food‐based policy measures). Towards the end of the
session, an intense debate took place, surrounded by the general willingness to examine in depth both
individual players’ and municipalities’ responsibility, in order to strengthen those beneficial effects for the civil
society that could potentially come from sustainable food policies and initiatives.
Giancarlo Cotella
TRACK 2 / SESSION B
The session featured two presentations analyzing the social interaction between citizens, the food production
and food policies’ development and implementation, based on well documented case studies. The first one
presented two examples of urban farms in Amsterdam, as an entry point to discuss citizen participation in
urban planning and the role of planners and local authorities in business or community initiatives. The second
one presented the FAO‐RUAF programme on assessing City Region Food Systems (CRFS), currently
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implemented in seven city regions. After having described the conceptual framework and assessment methods,
the authors underlined the key role of information exchange, political will and multi‐actors participation in
order to build a more inclusive multilevel food governance.
Coline Perrin
TRACK 2 / SESSION D
To face the new challenges, food‐systems need innovation. To foster innovation, food‐systems need to
combine different orders of worth or “quality conventions”. In this regard, search for the optimal solutions
through more information it is not enough. Search means above all interpretation, not just finding a solution
for a well‐defined problem. In other words, innovation in food‐systems means to accept the idea that the
fundamental challenge is the kind of search during with you do not know what you are looking for but will
recognize it when you find it. As David Stark (The Sense of Dissonance. Accounts of Worth in Economic Life,
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009) reminds us, John Dewey called this process inquiry. Inquiry,
differently from problem solving, involves the management of “perplexing situations” or a disagreement about
what counts. Innovation is precisely the ability to keep multiple principles of evaluation in play and to benefit
from that productive friction. Systems of food need thus to be arranged as forms of distributed intelligence,
where units are laterally accountable according to different principles of evaluation, that makes
entrepreneurship and innovation possible. The environment of modern economy resembles a “rugged” fitness
landscape with a jagged and irregular topography, with many peaks and many optimal solutions. In such an
environment, the most innovative solutions are those able to promote radical decentralization in which
virtually every unit becomes engaged in innovation. In all the papers, it is clear that orders of worth different
from market and prices provide an account of “what matters” in the world and how the “world works”, so they
also serve as a blueprint for regulatory experiments. In cases such as those, new social technology of judgment
emerge as something more than market mechanisms that mimic competition through regulatory devices,
This is the fil‐rouge of the papers presented in the session: innovation needs hybridization and new forms of
governance. For instance, both the agrofood system and the health care system are known for their sector
specific rules and routines. These routines in general do not favour innovations that transgress the borders of
the sector. Change makers, who cross borders without hesitation, linking the health care and agrofood sector
in new organizational arrangements. But also urban gardens take on different forms and meanings, combining
different governance principles and organizational solutions.
Furthermore, sustainable food planning assumes an 'unbridgeable gap' between the conventional agribusiness
complex of industrial food production and the alternative urban localecological food movement, with the latter
having grasped the attention and imagination of recent planning scholarship. Finally, if food is the most
essential component for human life, it is still unclear how this right could become a priority within institutional
policies, when choices related to food and nutrition are mainly sectorial and only rarely characterized by a
strategic, coordinated and coherent approach.
Filippo Barbera
TRACK 3/ SESSION A
Over the past ten years a lot of technical tools have been developed for supporting both analytical as well as
planning activities in the context of urban and periurban agriculture and horticulture.
Some of the main fields of development of such tools can be synthesized in the following points:
‐
rules and knowledges concerning access to land, facilities and infrastructure to give farmers, distributors,
and food entrepreneurs a chance to become established;
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policies and standards to encourage local food operations and to reduce the cost and uncertainty of
urban farming in the more comprehensive context of food systems;
‐
policies and regulations for local food procurement for schools as well as other public canteens and
hunger assistance programs, as a part of welfare policies and for encouraging new markets, innovations,
businesses, and entrepreneurs.
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In the context of these fields of technical assistance to actions, plans and policies, there are some emerging
areas of investigation that are consolidating some specific roles for researchers in relation to the existing and
diffused actions that are carried on by activists, non‐profit associations, private initiatives or business
entrepreneurs for social as well as commercial purposes. One area of investigation is about the creation and
the implementation of technical tools to support analysis and evaluations of urban agriculture and horticulture,
with a focus on the evaluation of sustainability.
In this direction some recent experiences that have been developed in Berlin and in Barcelona are trying to
combine life cycle assessment (LCA), to quantify the environmental impacts of Urban Rooftop Farming (URF)
forms; and life cycle costing (LCC), to quantify the economic costs of URF forms. This combination is a technical
base to support the implementation of different kind of existing tools in the context of urban horticulture,
taking advantage of the fact that rooftop farming can provide a kind of living laboratory with less analytical
variables than other farming activities.
The different life cycle analysis qualitative research can be used to support and counterproof the evaluation of
the perceptions of different stakeholders and, beside this, can feed a geographic information systems (GIS), to
quantify the availability and the localization of potential roofs for implementing URF. These kind of tools have a
potential in supporting the quantification and comparison of the environmental and economic aspects of
different URF types and practices to inform stakeholders in decision‐making processes.
More in general and not only for rooftop gardening, for planning, designing and evaluating a sustainable, local
food system for urban areas a spatial typology of urban agriculture is required. An example of this kind of
definition and classification have been studied and applied in the Netherland by combining spatial analysis,
property analysis, and the classification of the kind of food production, in order to define a tool that can
support decision makers to evaluate the capability of each farming initiative to contribute to a amore general
plan for urban farming at a city level.
What is emerging in these experiences of definition of analytical tools for evaluation and planning, is the need
of breaking the limits of land use planning that are mainly based on real estate values or on the combination of
traditional urban functions. Urban agriculture and horticulture implies a lot of different values, objective,
activities and interests: so we do need different point of views, planning principles, expertise and, finally, tools.
In this directions, the papers of this section are a good combination of a re‐orientation of existing tools for
evaluating the sustainability of a system, and the proposal of new tools for taking into consideration new issues
to combine food and urban contexts.
Andrea Calori
TRACK 3/ SESSION B
Urban agriculture is the term used to define agricultural production (crops and livestock) in urban and peri‐
urban areas for food and other uses, the related transport, processing and marketing of the agricultural
produce and non‐agricultural services provided by the urban farmers (www.hortis‐europe.net). The session
discussed methods and approaches for linking urban agriculture and food planning through some applicative
research projects and practical experiences moving from USA to Europe. In particular, the papers were focused
on two elements of the urban food system: the community gardens and the local markets. Community gardens
are plots of land managed by volunteers for the purpose of open space, food production, self consumption, or
many other educational and recreational functions. Local markets are in Europe related to specific
architectures and an old selling system (most of vegetables and fresh products).
The first contribution by Giorda E. reported the case of Detroit (USA), post‐industrial city similar with Turin, in
which the approach in urban renewal is based on taking care of people providing home and food to homeless.
Then we moved to the Spanish research (Garcia‐Fuentes J.M. and Garriga Bosch S.) on the restoration of local
markets and their role in the local food chain in Barcelona.
The case of a participatory project for the realization of a community garden in Chicago (USA) reported by Bon
P. pointed out how the stakeholder involvement guarantee the success of the process and the future use of the
place by citizens overcoming conflicts of interests.
The last experience (Cavallo A. and Di Donato B.) described an ongoing process in the metropolitan area of
Rome based on the construction of a local food strategy in the contest of the big sprawl of the city.
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Some common elements emerged from the discussions:
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The importance of a bottom‐up approach for the success of the food planning strategy, which must be
participatory based.
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The need to quantify the ecosystem services provided by rural areas with the aim to recognize them in
terms of farmers income.
‐
The idea that in the cities the presence of ‘public food places’ (like community gardens or local markets)
is important not only in terms of food provisioning but also in terms of social aggregation and
multicultural integration.
‐
The fact that a ‘good’ urban food chain is short, local and democratic.
In conclusion further researches for defining the real potentials of urban and peri‐urban agriculture in
providing food and services to citizens are required. Furthermore mapping the ecosystem services in the urban
ecosystem can be the first point for a more sustainable urban planning strategy.
Federica Larcher
TRACK 3/ SESSION D
This session saw a refreshing mix of presentations highlighting the specific local contexts of aspects of urban
agriculture – practical and theoretical ‐ that have emerged / are emerging in different European countries.
Urban agriculture was in the centre of all presentations, but investigations ranged from the studies of urban
farms (Switzerland) and of urban allotments (Portugal) to the exploration of appropriate logistical systems for
food stuffs (The Netherlands) to the emergence of community gardens (Italy) to the study of cultural
frameworks for urban food production (Germany/UK).
What kept the papers together and served as the basis for vivid discussion amonst the 25 or so session
participants were the relationships of particular local urban agriculture practices to their equally particular local
cultures and customs. So was it very important to understand the emergence of a community garden culture in
Perugia, Italy, in the light of recent economic changes or the development of planning typologies in tandem
with the study of existing food production practice on the example of urban farms in Switzerland. The historical
dimension of urban agriculture practice was related to current social conditions, as in the example of long‐
established versus spontanous allotment gardens in Lisbon, Portugal, or the dramatic increase of community
gardens in Perugia originating from victory garden predecessors.
Whilst 3 of the papers took a very practice‐based approach, one paper aimed to discuss a concept that may
provide an overarching cultural framework to urban agriculture practice and food‐related lifestyles. Introducing
the concept of Second Nature in relation to urban agriculture, the paper triggered discussions in the audience
about other philosophical/cultural concepts, such as the one of biophilia, which were then applied to all papers
presented.
Finally, it was a pleasure to integrate a relocated paper that dealt with logistical and managerial aspects of
urban food growing focussing on The Netherlands. This paper on how to fine‐tune transport and delivery of
food products gave the session a “reality check” on the practical transformations that food‐productive cities
will have to undergo in the future.
Katrin Bohn
TRACK 4/ SESSION A
The presentations report various experiences through which educational and training programs deal with
sustainable urban food planning.
Taze Fullford and Artunc (Mississippi State University) are identifying local opportunities for service learning
projects and the opportunities to lessen the effects of food deserts in rural areas. They discuss advantages and
disadvantages of using a service‐learning pedagogy in classrooms for planning and designing ecologically
sensitive sites. Service‐learning combines service objectives with learning objectives, with the intent that the
activity changes both the recipient and the provider of the service. This constructive and inspiring process
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allows students to actively engage and gain real experience with communicating conceptual ideas to
communities that otherwise would not be able to afford consultation.
Grichting (Qatar University) is presenting research and projects on edible landscape at the campus of Qatar
University to contribute to food supply. Permaculture is used as the philosophy and framework for all the
interventions proposed (transforming decorative landscapes into productive landscapes, creating productive
green roofs, etc.). Its maximum resource efficiency is experienced through water recycling and treatment,
organic waste recycling, clean and renewable energy producing, etc. Projects exposed are also based on the
concepts of regenerative cities, and circular metabolism.
Verdini (Xi’an Jiaotong‐Liverpool University) is exposing achievements and limitations of 3‐years training and
action‐research for sustainable rural fringe development in urban China. He wants to show how the research
titled “When local meets global: urban fringe planning, and institutional arrangement” has informed the
development of an innovative training module that equips students with tools for dealing with sustainable food
planning, from an institutional perspective. Verdini also shows how this teaching experience has resulted in
extra‐curricular activities, in forms of intensive workshops in rural villages with the involvement of local
stakeholders and governments.
Richtr (Czech Technical University in Prague) is showing that the case study of Detroit reveals the value of
urban agriculture in reimagining urban landscapes and food systems of shrinking cities and the importance of a
systemic network in this process, with the descriptions of Greening of Detroit (plant trees to replace those lost
to Dutch elm disease); Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (address issues of food quality,
availability and securtity especially for the African Amercian community); Earthworks Urban Farms (one of the
most well‐established urban ag projects); Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (a students’ non‐profit
organization). Richtr underlines that this kind of approach could be transferable to the European cities rather
than individual projects and strategies that have to be always carefully contextualized.
Damien Conaré
TRACK 5/ SESSIONS A+C
The Session, moving from the assumption that food is one central element of flows and networks that
contribute to cities’ survival, continuation and well‐being, focused on flows declined in diverse forms and ways,
such as environmental flows, food flows, flows of materials, energy, water, nutrients and waste. The Session
was also intended to cover networks that influence the urban food metabolism, going from food production to
food consumption and food waste management.
Attendance to the Session was fairly high and the discussion that followed the talks of presenters was lively
and enriching. The Session provided insights and points of reflection for the audience as well as good
opportunities for networking, given that also other authors present in the Session were interested in discussing
more in depth specific cross‐cutting issues.
The first contribution to the Session dealt with alternative food networks to examine to what extend such
economic practices maintain or enhance resilience and resistance, while taking into account main constraints
and opportunities that foster/limit their spread. The investigation focused on mapping grassroots organizations
promoting sustainable practices and groups that are contriving an alternative food system in Bergamo, a
medium sized town in northern Italy.
The re‐territorialization of the food system was an interesting point that stemmed out of the discussion, as this
reflection brought forth the ‘question of scale’ for the food system, more specifically the connection of the
food system with its territory, as the local scale appear to be the basis for organizations of ‘critical
consumption’. Moreover, discussion from the floor was also oriented on alternative food networks as possible
driving forces of territorial development.
Are short food supply chains (SFSCs) a major potential contributor to food’s environmental footprint or a shift
to consumption patterns could have a greater impact? This was one central question posed by the second
distribution at the Session which argued positively towards the second hypothesis while proposing SFSCs as
major contributors to sustainable consumption patterns through the reconnection to the agricultural territory,
the routinization of sustainable behaviors and educational processes.
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The discussion and questions that followed posed an interesting discussion on how participation in SFSCs,
sustainable consumption practices and local sustainability policy and planning are linked.
The third contribution focused on food flows analysis and mapping, arguing that the urban demand for local
food is quite discussed in recent literature, however it appears that mapping precisely those farmlands
supplying this demand for local food is not yet explored sufficiently. This contribution offered a critical analysis
of the relocalization process of urban food supply by focusing on spatial configuration, surface and location of
agricultural areas in Millau, a small town in south France.
From the discussion that followed it appeared that the subject has generated interest, especially as to what
extend the methodology followed for mapping the flows of food can be applied in vast areas as well as to what
commodities and their number is to be taken into consideration for a comprehensive assessment of a local
food system.
Guido Santini e Panayota Nicolarea
TRACK 5/ SESSION D
This session presented four case studies on Alternative Food Networks drawn from 4 different geographical
contexts. The countries of reference were Greece, Canada, Spain and China. The panelists presented the
evolution of food networks in different social, cultural, economic and environmental contexts. From the
discussion that followed the presentations emerged thatrather than viewing alternative and conventional food
networks as alternatives, they should be considerend in relation to one another. Moreover the discussion
highlight the need to explore how these new ventures can constitute a viable solution for a more equal and
sustainable agro‐food system and rewrite the the geography of periurban agriculture with significant
implications for spatial policies.
Dario Padovan
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Silvia Barbero, Paolo Tamborrini, “Systemic Design goes between disciplines for the sustainability in food processes and cultures”, In:
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Localizing urban food strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference
Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 517‐525.
ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6
SYSTEMIC DESIGN GOES BETWEEN DISCIPLINES FOR THE SUSTAINABILITY IN FOOD PROCESSES AND
CULTURES
Silvia Barbero1, Paolo Tamborrini2
Keywords: Systemic Design, sustainability, food processes
Abstract: An healthy and safe feeding is the key element to ensure a sustainable development for the
entire planet. The theme of food is one of the major challenges for the near future, indeed it involves
every aspect of our lives. The paper investigates how the Systemic Design approach applied to the
food sectors can contribute to decent life and, better, well‐being for all, maintaining the planets
ecological capacity for future generations.
This research shows the social, economical and environmental benefits generated to real cases that
apply the Systemic Design methodology in different food sectors and in different local context. One
case is “EN.FA.SI.”, in which the value chain related to one PGI bean endorses the entire area
involving the small family producers and the local SMEs. The other one is “Fondo Noir”, in which the
spent coffee ground from the coffee bars in the metropolitan city centre are collected in order to
generate many new businesses.
The purpose is to give empirical and theoretical contributions, arising how the complexity of food
systems impacts the simplicity of the everyday life solutions. The complexity involved in that kind of
design processes interested a wide range of players and it aims to contribute the scientific debate on
the role of design as mediator and facilitator among different specific disciplines. The polytechnic
culture, at the base of design disciplines, guarantees a model for the eco‐innovation also in food
sector, with strong and solid approach.
1.
Introduction
An healthy and safe feeding is the key element to ensure a sustainable development for the entire
planet. The theme of food is one of the major challenges for the near future, indeed it involves every
aspect of our lives: a correct behaviour in relation with the territory means respect for ourselves and
our health.
The environmental sustainability related to the complex system of food involves the entire food’s life
cycle and every stakeholders who takes part in it. That includes food’s production, transformation,
conservation, transport, direct sell to the final consumer, consumption habits and disposal (Figure 1).
In food production phase, the hegemony of intensive farming and livestock have caused huge social,
ethic and environmental debates (Shiva, 1993), like the consideration for animals and ecosystem
exploitation, workers’ rights defence and care of consumers health. These needs of huge amount of
food force some risky adulteration in production, like the massive use of chemical pesticides or the
use of organisms genetically modified, with the consequences related to the food security.
The market request for ready‐to‐eat, long‐lasting meals has determined the actual food processing
system. Frozen, long‐lasting and freeze‐dried meals are worldwide sold in supermarkets, one of the
social consequences is the lost of cultural and geographic peculiarities. The transformation fakes and
flattens out the appearance of the food that everybody eats. Food’s flaws disappear and it’s not that
rare to get to the phenomena of sophistication and food fraud. Other aspects to be considered in the
1
2
Department of Architecture and Design (Politecnico di Torino), silvia.barbero@polito.it
Department of Architecture and Design (Politecnico di Torino), paolo.tamborrini@polito.it
517
Silvia Barbero, Paolo Tamborrini, “Systemic Design goes between disciplines for the sustainability in food processes and cultures”
transformation phase are the high level of industrialization in all the processes, with great attention
in the sanitation of food (Collins, 2010), that is not bad from itself but should be managed in a
sensitive way in case of high migration fluxes like nowadays.
Processed foods are moved among the five continents following fixed roads defined by a highly
vertical distribution system. In order to assure to the food a fictitious freshness and a good shape
despite the long time and space transportation, sophisticated systems are required. In that situation,
the large‐scale distribution has a big power.
For sure, the consumer has a crucial role because decides what to eat and consequently what the
food system should produce. The main problems related to the consumption phase of food are the
loss in the perception of food seasonality, and in the culinary traditions, furthermore people are
asking more and more for low‐cost food. At global level the contradiction between obesity and
malnutrition should be faced in a long term and serious programme for the health and wellbeing of
local communities.
Last, but not least, is the disposal phase: every year one third of the food intended for human
consumption is thrown away. The struggle against food waste and losses is one of the challenges of
this century.
The change in human diet habits can have the power and the responsibility to modify the entire
system. The increase of awareness in the personal food and nutritive choice will lead that change. A
great possibility consists in the promotion of new behaviours and new model of consumption: re‐
discovery the culinary practices of waste reuse, well known to the previous generations, it becomes
essential to create new ethical systems to share the nourishment in excess as well as to avoid
upstream the food over‐production.
The paper investigates how the Systemic Design approach applied to the food sectors can contribute
to decent life and, better, well‐being for all, maintaining the planets ecological capacity for future
generations (L. Bistagnino, 2009).
Figure 1. The main problems related to the life cycle of food system.
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Silvia Barbero, Paolo Tamborrini, “Systemic Design goes between disciplines for the sustainability in food processes and cultures”
2.
Justification
The problems expressed in the introduction are interrelated each others in a complex network of
relations and implications, hence, it is needed a new way facing the food productive processes in
order to obtain multi‐benefits for the environment, the society and the economy.
The theories about complexity help the management of the entirely food systems and the design
approaches help the planning of different divergent elements.
The complexity theories evolved on the basis that living systems continually draw upon external
sources of energy and maintain a stable state of low entropy, as the physicist Erwin Schrödinger
asserted after the WWII, on the basis of the General Systems Theory by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
Some of the next rationales applied those theories also on artificial systems: complexity models of
living systems address also productive models with their organizations and management, where the
relationships between parts are more important than the parts themselves. Treating productive
organizations as complex adaptive systems allows a new management model to emerge in
economical, social and environmental benefits (Pisek & Wilson, 2001). In that field, Cluster Theory
(Porter, 1990) evolved in more environmental sensitive theories, like Industrial Ecology (Frosh &
Gallopoulos, 1989) and Industrial Symbiosis (Chertow, 2000).
The design thinking, as Buchanan said in 1992, means the way to creatively and strategically
reconfigure a design concept on a situation with systemic integration. This needs a strong inter‐ and
trans‐disciplinarity during the design phase (Fuller, 1981), with the increasing involvement of
different disciplines including urban planning, public policy, business management and
environmental sciences (Chertow, Ashton, & Kuppali, 2004). However, the design thinking doesn’t
explicitly include the social aspects, so new evolution in the discipline is needed: the Systemic Design
(Jones, 2009). Food is an overarching social phenomenon that incorporates the very essence of the
humanity (Maffei, 2015).
The Systemic Design is planning the flows of matter and energy that flow from a system to another
one towards zero emissions, creating a new economic‐productive model, a community of strongly
related people and a conscious connection with the territory. According to comprehensive
approaches, as Systemic Design and Blue Economy (G. Pauli, 2010), they define many eco‐guidelines,
based on different practices and systems of goods production, transformation and consumption. This
would allow defining new food systems, promoting social and environmental development.
The purpose of this paper is to give empirical and theoretical contributions with developed,
developing and transition perspectives. From two of the case studies, directly developed by the
authors in the last five years, arise how the complexity of food systems impacts the simplicity of the
everyday life solutions. Its role is crucial in the environmental context and in the development of the
local territory.
3.
Methodology
Before dealing with the projects, it is necessary to clarify the applied methodology: Systemic Design.
The first step in planning with that methodology is the holistic survey of the current state of affairs: it
clearly outlines all the steps and actions undertaken and/or undergone by the context in question. In
order to do so, the description of what enters the system (input), its origins, what happens inside it
and, finally, what comes out of it, its destination and its possible use (output) is done. The analysis of
these inputs and outputs will have to be of two different kinds: quantitative, so as to know the
quantities that are moved around; qualitative, to know exactly what can be fully used.
In addition, the identification the players involved in the system, their nature, their know‐how and
their reciprocal relations is crucial.
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These actions help to understand the relationship occurring between the parties and the context, as
well as the communication they have, one with the others and with the production, transformation
and marketing sites.
These steps enable to have a clear idea of:
the needed resources, their features and origins;
processing waste, their specific qualities and their final destination;
what occurs throughout the processes, comparing the specific differences of inputs and
outputs.
The result is a chart with the global vision of the process and of the overall relationships that
characterize and make the system work. At this point one can notice how useless and contradictory it
is to focus merely on the individual parts, ignoring the links with the elements existing inside, outside
and all around the process. Moreover, an approach by single parts has proved to be in contrast with
the dynamism of the whole and with the "traditional" efficiency of the natural systems.
At the state of affairs, one can ascertain that, within the current intensive productions, many choices
are made uncritically, sometimes according to maintain a linear‐oriented tradition which has proved,
at present, to be rather defective.
The safeguard of this global vision, beneficial to the sustainable transformation of the processes, can
be attained by drawing a graphic chart, allowing us to retrace both with eyes and mind, the flows of
matter and energy, their use, the knowledge capitals, the relationships between the actors, and the
contextualization of the system in analysis. These graphic schemes allow simultaneous synoptic
views of the values at stake, and for the overall number of criticalities to be faced and solved.
Particularly the latter are represented within a process and are to be taken into account in
comparison with it. The causes of problems can be ascertained when they occur, or in the light of
previous choices or phases, or because of their misinterpretation, or even within the value generated
in the course of the following steps. Every problem is assessed according to different parameters,
such as advantages and economic value, environmental sustainability, correlation with the territory
and production flexibility. Each of these parameters is evaluated both from a quality and quantity
point of view. In turn, the study of the quantity allows to outline an economic scheme of the whole,
giving conclusive evidence of the fact that the entire process, besides being based only on the
production focus, can only be improved by increasing the number of products considerably.
This peculiarity of the present economic/productive system, and the consequential on‐going increase
in the quantity of waste, are real issues to be dealt with in the forthcoming future, if we wish to
develop our society in a positive and satisfactory way (Campagnaro, 2011).
Identifying the problems and trying to understand them leads to a clearer perception of the
phenomena they have arisen from. Physics, biology, chemistry, mathematical sciences, history and
economy, are the indispensable tools for this analysis. A designer is asked to coordinate, enhance
and harmonize their contributions and to change the faults in the dynamic flow of the production.
Nature is the system par excellence, following nature‘s footsteps the designer reorganize the starting
point of the current situation, to identify less energy‐consuming processes and productions, and to
emphasize the neglected qualities of the outputs as much as possible. By doing so, all kinds of matter
may be turned into input for other productions or systems, via connections that may be entwined
with the productive realities carried out on the territory.
A systemic project prevents focalisation only on one product and tends to privilege complexity, local
dimension and flexibility. This enables to revitalize and resume the normal links between each firm
and its own context, based on the outputs it has produced, and to prioritise the decrease in the
number of items that have not been adequately enhanced (waste).
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Thinking by connections is the only applicable solution when attempting to solve the problem of the
environmental impact, a burden placed on the territory, on account of intensive productions. In
conformity with the consistency between outputs available and required inputs, a designer may
conceive useful connections and interactions, and think of more innovative ways to employ matter.
This will enable one to arrive at new productions and forms of energy generation, and will commit
the many players of a territory to modern, flexible and multipolar economic models.
The heart of the project is set on very specific assumptions. The presence of pollution and disposable
waste, implies that human and material resources are being misused. A more adequate employ of
the same may result in new production processes, new opportunities to make profits and new forms
of coexistence between production and reproduction activities, in compliance with the new
parameters for a modern and sustainable balance within the ecosystem.
A new graphic table can be done with the systemic view, so it shows a remarkable increase both in
the flows of the energy production and metabolized materials.
This designing methodology has different types of positive outcomes: a decrease in the number of
individual products, focussing on building a balanced relationship with the resources of the territory;
an exponential growth of production capacity of the territory; new and more useful material assets;
better quality services, administered to the community; increased productivity; more job
opportunities. These outcomes, which are not detrimental to the quality of life, should also prove
that, a positive dialogue with the territory, involves taking notice of the material culture and
enhancing knowledge that one needs to place within the historical context of reference.
The field of research regards multidisciplinarity, which provides the foundation for the systemic
approach, as the only way to go for future development. The possibility of observing real examples of
systemic integration on the ground, starting new scientific, economic, sociologic and politic research
partnerships with the other actors from the territory, leads towards an open dialogue among the
players, a strong sense of collective sharing and triggers a highly innovative territorial development
that takes its components into account.
Systemic design opens up the possibility of innovative and virtuous business models in which the
waste, that is today a burden, tomorrow can become a resource for new industrial systems offering
numerous opportunities of development in the region, in productive areas and in connected services.
4.
Analysis and discussion of findings
This paper shows the social, economical and environmental benefits generated to real cases that
apply the Systemic Design approach in different food sectors and in different local context, in order
to enforce the potentialities of the application of this methodology.
The first one is “EN.FA.SI.” (co‐funded by the Piedmont Region) in which the value chain related to
the PGI bean, Fagiolo Cuneo, endorses the entire area involving the small family producers and the
local SMEs.
The second one is “Fondo Noir” (funded by Lavazza company) in which the spent coffee ground from
the coffee bars in the metropolitan city centre are collected by cargo‐bike in order to generate many
new businesses.
Thinking about a food territorial system means the guidance of politic, scientific, organisational,
designing processes, based on the generation of increased relationships, shared visions and
strategies (cross, pervasive, and fundamental ones).
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4.1
EN.FA.SI
The agri‐food sector is proving to have particularly high impact because of the use of pesticides
and fertilizers, the consumption of energy and natural resources, the emissions of greenhouse
gases and the large amount of waste produced.
Recently, Politecnico di Torino has engaged in research activities in the agro‐food industry, using
the Systemic Design methodology, especially in the Cuneo Bean cultivation because it showed
several conceptual criticalities and a production system which required redesigning, initially
employing an excessive use of natural and artificial resources, such as synthetic products, energy,
as well as waste of secondary raw materials (Fiore & Tamborrini, 2014). The project included a
feasibility study, followed by the industrial testing of each stage of production. This involved many
local SMEs (in some cases family‐owned businesses).
The design of a complex system in which outputs are valued as input of other production sectors,
ensures environmental benefits such as the reducing of wastes. It evolved also economic benefits,
such as the development of several new economies in the area. A graphical view of the system
complexity with all the interconnected activities helps to underline material and energy flows,
inputs and outputs (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The complex system designed for the EN.FA.SI project.
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4.2
Fondo Noir
Annual generation of Spent Coffee Grounds (SCG) is estimated around six million tonnes per year.
They currently do not have a commercial value and are disposed of in landfills or as compost. The
Systemic Design project provides a holistic vision in which these production are linked together
through relationships, output and input, flows of energy and materials, in order to make the SCG
recovery activity complex, with almost no waste.
Nowadays, SCG need to be disposed of in a controlled way, because the residual caffeine, tannins
and polyphenols could have negative effects on the environment (Panusa et al., 2013). In addition
to the elements listed, SCG contain also other elements such as minerals, melanoidins, lipids and
waxes, lignin, proteins, ashes and polysaccharides (cellulose and hemicellulose are a little less
than 50% in the anhydrous SCG). These components have high quality and physical characteristics
that can be exploited.
The objectives of the work are not only the creation of a system that gives new life to the SCG but
also the educational and social aspects related to the valorisation of waste. The project is carried
out by Politecnico di Torino (Department of Architecture and Design), in collaboration with the
biggest Italian coffee roasted company (Lavazza SpA) (Barbero, Fiore, 2014).
SCG should be split into their two constituent elements: the oils and the exhausted coffee
grounds, each of which finds different application sectors. The first one can be used in cosmetics,
energy and cleaning sectors; the second one in agronomy, print, energy, plastics and building
sectors. It is necessary to systematize the activities, to understand what should be done first, the
necessary working operations and the characteristics of the material after such operations (Figure 3).
Figure 3. The complex system designed for Fondo Noir project.
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5.
Conclusions
Data show that major levels of overproduction, waste, surplus and underutilization are consequential
to intensive productions, in addition to its core business. Turning these features into resources for
the territory means giving new opportunities to all those who are more likely to incur the costs of
their disposal. If we exploit the sense of territorial belonging of the resources we may boost a type of
development that favours the local dimension and allows the sprouting of self‐sufficient realities,
able to produce, supply and generate energy autonomously, and there will be a dramatic decrease in
the number of long haul transportation.
The complexity involved in that kind of design processes interested a wide range of players and it
aims to contribute the scientific debate on the role of design as mediator and facilitator among
different specific disciplines (Germak, 2009). The polytechnic culture, at the base of design
disciplines, guarantee a model for the eco‐innovation also in food sector, with strong and solid
approach.
This methodology can be fostered because it is proven and gives answer to the problems listed in the
introduction. It has the promising ability to deliver new diplomas in this field.
6.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Prof. Luigi Bistagnino, who is the theorist of the Systemic Design, for his passionate
encouragements. Special thank goes to the whole Systemic Innovation Design research group at
Politecnico di Torino for the many projects done together in the last decade.
7.
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