Localizing Urban Food Strategies

The The 7th Aesop Sustainable Food Planning (SFP) Conference will take place in Torino, the city where Slow Food holds the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre (www.salonedelgusto.com/en/) and where the first Eataly store was born (www.eataly.net/it_en). At the regional level the conference locates into the most vivid agricultural system of the country, the Piedmont Region, that also hosts the most important University of Gastronomic Sciences in the world. The choice of Turin is also related to the objective to tie the conference to the 2015 Expo “Feeding the planet”, that will take place in Milan (30 min. from Torino by train) (www.expo2015.org), as well as to the event “Feeding the city” that will be opened by our Conference and closed by the UNDP “Thirld World Forum of Local Economic Development”.

In this sense, Localizing urban food strategie simplies firstly to connect the SFP issues in place and in time within each specific local context. Moreover, by targeting planners, agronomists, designers, geographers, administrators, activist etc. engaged in the urban food debate, Farming cities and performing rurality aims at representing a platform for the development of fruitful perspectives over policies and practices for SFP.

On the one hand, Farming cities refers to the development of innovative roles for agricultural production in and around the city, approaching in a structural manner the way agricultural issues are dealt (or should be dealt) within contemporary urban policies.

On the other hand, Performing rurality considers urban food strategies as a tool to define a cooperating relationship between the urban and the rural, reversing in terms of equality the traditional ideological subordination of the countryside to the city. 

The activities of the Conference will be articulated around the following tracks: (i) Spatial planning and urban design, (ii) Governance and private entrepreneurship, (iii) Relevant experiences and practices, (iv) Training and jobs, (v) Flows and networks.

There will be a specific activity for PhD students and young scholars.