Milan [ edible city ]

As a living beings we depend on food. Our entire life is shaped by this essential need but considering cities, the place in which we live and work, a contradiction is becoming visible. The sustenance of the urban lifestyle depends even more from something we produce elsewhere, in something we usually call countryside. After industrialization, the birth of new networks and long-term conservation methods changed the way we provide food. Nowadays, what is really feeding us is a chain of corporations that are turning food into a product. We do not know anymore where and in which way food is produced. Food and agriculture produce one third of global greenhouse gas emissions and use seventy percent of the world’s freshwater. Italy, a region with a long tradition of agricultural production, is today a country in transition. Our territory loses everyday a considerable portion of its fertile agricultural lands. This soil is used to build new infrastructure, housing and industrial buildings that are becoming more and more abandoned and useless. This thesis wants to analyse this trend looking at the different phases that characterize the entire food chain: from farming to consumer, passing through the complex system of distribution. After a general analysis, Milan and its regional context will be the focus of this research. The reflections that will come out from this study will lead to a design proposal which wants to give an answer to possible emerging questions.