Rethinking public space through food processes: Research proposal for a “public city”

Abstract

Wide areas in urban peripheries are made up of the council housing, i.e., neighbourhoods provided by public authorities. Diverse in building forms and types, these areas are frequently equipped with large open spaces: their "public" dimension, in physical and social terms, which is currently in crisis. The aim of this article is to discuss two issues arising from this fact: how the sharing of food-related processes can have a strategic role in the redevelopment of the "public city", and how the "implicit planning" of these processes may provide useful insights to update planning tools and define new types of public spaces. A multiplicity of reflections leads to the conclusion that public spaces have declined, primarily, due to their inability to represent an increasingly fragmented and diverse society. In this respect, food recreates the primaeval sense of sharing, which encourages new forms of selfpromoted public spaces. An innovation of these spaces can be found in the ability to activate or enhance not only social but also economic and cohesive social relationship networks that can break down the mechanisms leading to isolation, closures and marginality often affecting peripheral council housing neighbourhoods.

Downscaling Food System for the ‘Public City’ Regeneration—An Experience of Social Agriculture in Trieste

“…A second research step, conversely, was aimed at drafting a project masterplan (Figure 8), starting from the identification of spaces in the neighbourhood, and more generally in the peripheral context, where the food network finds visibility on the local scale in terms of cultivated land, points of sale, spaces for food processing, distribution, consumption, etc. Referring to public districts located in peri-urban areas, we can try to define these 'food spaces' as places in which food production, processing and consumption, together with places where to develop food education activities, become an opportunity to activate (or support) processes of urban regeneration and to promote stable and temporary forms of sociality [79]. The forms of sociality alluded to are aimed at guaranteeing the right to the city, favouring the consolidation of support and aid networks for fragile people, encouraging forms of use and care to improve the 'life cycles' of urban spaces and reduce resource consumption.…”