Matelda Reho

Urban food strategies and plans: considerations on the assessment construction

In a context of growing attention to the issue of feeding the city, this article focuses on the role of the assessments guiding the processes of urban food policy and planning to reach Sustainable Food Security. The starting point is a collection of experiences dealing with some cities that in recent years have launched strategies for developing healthier and more sustainable food systems. Their analysis highlights the innovations in the construction of cognitive frameworks supporting food policies and planning, as well as the difficulties to explore the food phenomenon on the qualitative and quantitative level. Within a current research meant to address the food agenda in Venice, the authors take advantage from the case studies comparison to propose key themes and investigation methods a preliminary assessment of the existing food system. Considering the strong impact of the huge tourist flow that invests the city, daily, the foodservice sector is considered as the main challenging and strategical core-area for boosting impactful changes in the urban food system.

Looking Beneath the Landscape of Carbon Neutrality

In recent years, European and national policies have given strong support to renewable energies. The Common Agricultural Policy, in particular, has been pushing farmers to produce renewable energy, both as a contribution to sustainable development and as a way to achieve better economic results. Energy production from biomass, biogas and biofuel produced by farmers – agroenergy – is beginning to produce landscape changes. Despite their apparent contribution to sustainability, these new landscapes can be – and often are – contested. The Veneto region, due to the extreme proximity between agricultural and urban land, is a very interesting area for observing new agroenergy landscapes, opposed by nearby residents. Far from being considered simply as an expression of a selfish NIMBY attitude, local conflicts question both local transformation decisions and the very principle of agroenergy. Their arguments must be taken into account if we intend to design a fairer, more democratic ‘landscape of carbon neutrality’.