Paper short abstract:

Our contribution proposes a reflection starting from an action research carried out in the context of the Metropolitan Turin Food Atlas aimed at exploring the possibilities of building a City Region Food System as a basis for a polycentric food policy.

Paper long abstract:

Food space today is much more than a relationship between an urban centre that consumes and a surrounding rural area that produces if it was ever that simple. Today, however, food flows have become more complex than ever before, with global extensions of supply networks, the countryside's urbanisation, and the return of a part of food production to the more strictly urban space. In this scenario, a monocentric food policy can perform some relevant functions - since obviously, even in a space of more complex networked flows, the nodal place that a city like Turin occupies makes it possible to take a series of decisions on the flows that pass through it - but it also shows all its limitations, first and foremost that of being excessively focused on the consumption side.

The idea of a polycentric food policy on the scale of the Metropolitan City therefore seems promising in this historical context and in a territory like Turin. Although it cannot be assumed that it can govern the total complexity of the system mentioned above, it does have the potential to address the issues concerning the food space on the one hand with greater complexity and comprehensiveness, without on the other hand sinning from excessive complexity.

The research group of the Turin Food Atlas is working on this hypothesis in an action-research pathway that starts from participation in the national Agritech research and in the Horizon FUSILLI project, referring to the approach of the City Region Food System (CRFS).