Reshaping the Cities of the Future to Merge Urbanity and Foodscape

The Case of the Future Food Living Labs

Cities are often known for being the major centers for production and consumption. Urban areas are the places where prosperity and wealth are most displayed, where commercial activities and financial centers flourish, where infrastructures show their brightest side. But at what cost?

Cities are also places of deep inequalities, paradoxes, inefficiencies; all distortions that the health crisis, exacerbated by the climate, food, and economic crises, has made evident.

The past teaches us that periodically one of the first reactions to pandemics is a drastic abandonment of cities. This is even more evident this time considering that nowadays urban lifestyle is incredibly detached and dissociated with physical and mental wellbeing, sociality, nature, and the surrounding landscape, especially in big cities or megalopolis.

Climate change exacerbates already precarious mental balances, generating new forms of stress and anxiety, especially in the younger generations. Eco-anxiety, ecological grief, or distress caused by environmental change are expressly mentioned amongst the 10 new insights on climate change, published last month by FutureEarth, the Earth League, and the World Climate Research Program. These concerns find a solid basis in urban areas. Last November, Nature revealed mass air pollution concentration in European urban centers, posing concrete risks for its citizens’ health, in addition to the heavy impact that unsustainable production and consumption models have on our limited natural resources.

Faced with the pressing needs from individuals in search of improved quality of life, greener spaces, and a better balance between professional, social, and personal satisfaction, cities are forced to be rethought and reshaped to promote and incorporate nature and the landscape within their urban policies, to continue to host thriving communities. Not only given the disruption imposed by the coronavirus pandemic but also to become more flexible and resilient to climate alteration and the recent perspectives and aspirations. Whether it is called “city sickness” or “rural nostalgia” the reality is that an increasing number of individuals are considering embracing a different pace of life, to value more the “street-level,” the neighbor dimension, to ensure a better balance between social relationships and natural regeneration.

Not surprisingly, both Plato and Aristotle spoke about the need for cities to become smaller.

What if the city and countryside were not two distant and non-communicating worlds?

What if cities became a pivot around which to rebuild a new form of urbanity that intersects the need for human and nature connection?

What if cities became open-air laboratories in which to experiment cultural, social, territorial, landscape richness, based on constant dialogue and interchange?

Re-start from common goods and shared values

Regardless of any geographical, religious, political difference, humans all have the same ancestral needs. Each of us aspires to be happy, stay healthy, avoid suffering, and access basic needs. Just as the natural ecosystem, the global challenges we have been facing as humanity recall how everything is interconnected. Every single decision generates an effect on our economy, the social fabric, or the environment.

Restoring common, universal values is the key to bring back the heart of humanity and the planet: caring for the individual, trust, generosity, empathy, holistic regeneration, and curiosity. Starting from preserving common goods, as goods that are in the interest of the whole society, means restoring the Golden Rule or the ethics of reciprocity.

Within this context, the power of food is crucial. Food is not only life, nutrition, and energy. Food is at the foundation of political, cultural, and economic connections. As a universal language, food represents traditions, peoples, rituals, and societies. Food connects cities and countryside, producers and consumers. Food is “an extremely rich social fact,” as defined by the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai.

We cannot solve the challenges of our era without merging our lifestyle with the richness and beauty of our Foodscape. Through food, we can achieve Ecological Integrity.

The role of Living Labs

“A country is needed, if only for the sake of getting away. A country means not being alone, knowing that in the people, in the plants, in the land there’s something of yours, that when you’re not there, it’s waiting for you.” — Cesare Pavese

Future Food Living Labs (FFLL) are a network of physical spaces that connect food innovation with community outreach, serving as experimentation laboratories for a new and more balanced lifestyle. They are permanent, operational labs located in vibrant urban areas offering a variety of services to the local community. Designed to be part ‘playground’ for food-tech startups and new food concepts, they serve as a space to prototype, test, and validate ideas and technologies as they receive feedback from consumers, as well as a platform to let themselves be known to the world.

One of the primary goals of the Living Labs is to raise awareness and generate constructive dialogue between communities about issues within the agri-food chain, connecting the dots and clarifying the climate impact of our food choices. In recent years, we have realized the tremendous need to create spaces catalyzing casual collision. Physical areas and concrete spaces where to experiment, to test, to create, to make mistakes.

Creating awareness through action means bringing together people from different areas and expertise, embracing multistakeholder, multidisciplinary, and multidimensional approaches displayed in events, conversations, contents, dinners to solve complex and multifaceted challenges.

It means providing the stage for startups and labs to experiment with new solutions and giving global and local food and beverage companies a neutral playground for SDGs-centered innovation, done in symbiosis with final beneficiaries.

It means creating a meeting platform for communities, institutions, universities, youths, innovators, and businesses, a runway of ideas and solutions that can be externalized in different forms, and sharing experiences related to food: scientific aperitifs, workshops and hackathons, dinners, conversations on issues such as food identity, food sector tech meetups, and much more.

These are the pillars at the basis of all our Living Labs, spaces that people need to visit and test in person, places of research and cross-pollination centered on the user and the surrounding ecosystem of open innovation in a perspective of prosperity thinking.

These are areas where empowering People, protecting the Planet, and enabling Prosperity starting from the places characterized by a deep food culture.

Take a look at the FFLL:

Officucina (Reggio Emilia, Italy)

The prototype arrived, thanks to the courage of a bold and visionary local government, in a small city (171,491 population) Reggio Emilia, in 2014, thanks to the collaboration with the Municipality, the local Innovation Agency, and City Museums. The lab officially came to life with the arrival of the students of the first edition of our Food Innovation Master Program, held by UNIMORE. Their home was not a traditional classroom, but a real laboratory, born from the marriage between a Fab Lab and a typical kitchen of the Food Valley, there was fun to be had among 3D printers, laser cutters, cutting boards and rolling pins!

Obviously always open to the community, as were the kitchens of our grandmothers!

That remained open until 2018. Officucina contributed to helping citizens rediscover their connection with agriculture, seen no longer as an element of tradition but as a driving force of the territory and local food policy.

Scuderia — Future Food Living Lab (Bologna, Italy)

in 2018, the second Living Lab arrived in a medium-sized historical city (388,367 population), in the middle of the University of Bologna to combine and enrich food traditions with innovation. For years after the second world war, Bologna was home to the largest university cafeteria. Thanks to three specific labs (urban farming; digital manufacturing applied to food; and Food Alchemist Lab) startups and food innovators there have found a playground for showcasing their technologies and testing with real customers every day. We can feed people not only through food but also through inspiring thoughts.

The Scuderia replicates the model first developed with Officucina, but on a broader scale and enriched with Future Food’s three basic pillars: education, community, and innovation as the basis for inspiration, perspiration, and action for a new generation of changemakers and food entrepreneurs that need to connect with the broader community.

Kyobashi Future Food Living Lab (Yaesu, Tokyo, Japan)

located in one of the most futuristic megacity in the Planet, Tokyo (9,273,000 population); opened together with an outstanding and innovative partner Tokyo Tatemono, one of the most important Japanese real estate company founded in 1896, they base part of their mission on creating thriving communities, the reason for their success. Given the historical role of the fish and vegetable markets, the Kyobashi neighborhood has been the center of Food culture in Tokyo for over 300 years. The Lab merges an innovation hub, a space for market validation and testing; an open innovation platform for creating sustainable cities; and a food destination to strengthen relationships between producers and consumers.

Last but for sure not least, Pollica (Cilento — Italy),

the most recent Living Lab has arrived in 2021 in a small community (only 2,268 inhabitants in the winter — 40,000 in the summertime) enriched by its beautiful rural, mountain, and coastal landscapes. It is the first Lab with the specific aim of bringing rural lifestyle alive, supporting the needs, and overcoming the challenges that are typical of small villages and inland areas characterizing our beautiful territory.

First and foremost, it is an open-air campus, permeated with the incredible legacy connected to this area.

→ History and philosophy: This area is characterized by unique historical wisdom, that we have inherited from Elea, then named Velia by the Romans, known for being the cradle of one of the most famous philosophical schools of ancient Greece, and from the Archaeological Park of Velia, which still preserves the thinking of Parmenides, the “philosopher-physician and philosopher-doctor.”

→ Science and health: Pollica is the cradle of the Salerno Medical School, the first and most important medical institution in Europe in the Middle Ages, enriched over time by the studies of Ancel and Margaret Keys, the nutritionist couple that, in 1975, created the expression “Mediterranean Diet,” summarizing in a single term the sustainable and good quality of diet, habits, and lifestyle of the area.

→ Environment and wellbeing: Pollica is one of the seven communities to have formally supported the recognition of the Mediterranean Diet as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. With the creation of the Double Food Pyramid, the different types of foods at the basis of the Mediterranean Diet are compared with the impact of their production to understand the very close correlation between our food choices and the future of our planet. Moreover, together with the multitude of protected areas and natural parks enriching the local landscape, Pollica and its balanced way of life is the clear confirmation that planet and human wellbeing are simply two sides of the same coin.

It is also thanks to the mission of Mayor Angelo Vassallo, who gave his life for the regeneration and development of his land, and the current Mayor of Pollica, Stefano Pisani, that today we understand the importance of education of new generations to active citizenship for the healthy development of the territories, and the protection of knowledge, environment, and legality.

Thanks to the Mediterraneo, we can all benefit from the importance of valuing sustainable and balanced lifestyles, the knowledge, rituals, and traditions related to growing, harvesting, fishing, preserving, cooking, and especially sharing food, ranging from landscape to table.

“The world is not suffering from a lack of intelligence or leadership, it is suffering greatly from a lack of wisdom,” stresses Robert Stanberg from Cornell University, and from Cilento, we can all become wiser. However, innovation is equally needed to contrast rural desertion, to strengthen infrastructures and logistics, to allow proud, young entrepreneurs to contribute for their land and community to prosper.

This can be done through food. Through the stories of local men and women of courage. Through studies and research as at the MedEatResearch and the Virtual Museum of the Mediterranean Diet. Through connections and partnerships from different levels and people of expertise. Through new agrifood system models that empower territories and disclose dormant resources.

All that remains is for me to say: come and see!

The Future Food Institute is an international social enterprise and the cornerstone of the Future Food Ecosystem, a collection of research labs, partnerships, initiatives, platforms, networks, entrepreneurial projects and academic programs, aiming to build a more equitable world through enlightening a world-class breed of innovators, boosting entrepreneurial potential, and improving agri-food expertise and tradition.

Future food advocates for positive change through initiatives in Waste & Circular Systems, Water Safety & Security, Climate, Earth Regeneration, Mediterranean Foodscape, Nutrition for All, Humana Communitas, and Cities of the Future as we catalyze progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Learn more at www.futurefoodinsitute.org, join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Or attend a program through the FutureFood.Academy!