Modelling food policies in Italian urban agendas in the time of Covid-19: Experiences, challenges and opportunities.

Global food systems are broken and in need of profound change. These imbalances and vulnerabilities are particularly strong in cities, where most of the global population lives and that are at the core of the major challenges linked with food production and consumption. The food system transition needs cities as key game-changers towards more sustainable, equitable, healthier and fairer food systems. Against this backdrop, the present article analyses the role of food policies within urban policies, with a focus on Italian cities. In particular, the article discusses data collected from representatives of 100 municipalities across Northern, Central and Southern Italy. Moreover, it addresses the types of policies and initiatives adopted at the local level, the main obstacles encountered, the role of national and international city networks and the impact of Covid-19 on urban food security, with the aim to identify potential models of urban food policies as a structural component of a broader urban agenda. By doing this, the article aims at filling a research gap in current literature, as it is the first large-scale survey on urban food policies in Italy, identifying models of urban food policies that are already being developed within broader urban development agendas.

Rome, a Policy without Politics: The Participatory Process for a Metropolitan Scale Food Policy.

In light of the challenges that all cities face today, food is offered as a prism through which to read and intervene on various areas that affect the quality of life of the population: circular economy, urban metabolism, social relations, economies, and food quality. In the Roman context, in recent years, numerous initiatives have revitalized the debate on food and brought the discussion to the center of the interest of an ever-increasing number of citizens. However, these experiences appear unrelated and there is a lack of coordination and political coherence. Faced with this evidence, starting from a territorial analysis, this contribution analyzes the process that led a local group of stakeholders to formulate a proposal for a food policy for the city of Rome. The proposal contains a series of possible actions that aim, on the one hand, to recompose the relations between the city and its territory, with a view to re-localization and re-territorialization of agro-food productions and, on the other hand, to reconnect the economic and social relations that the industrialization of food chains has compromised. The network analysis of the bottom-up process, which mainly investigates networking and negotiation skills between various interests, is carried out and related to a careful analysis of the food system in the Roman context. Furthermore, an overview of the state of the art of urban food policies in Italy has been provided to better contextualize the study case. The findings show actors and topics involved in the process, identifying further development towards a more comprehensive participatory process for a systemic food strategy at the metropolitan level.