Food narratives and planning spaces in Milan City Region

The paper aims at analysing how food entered in the planning discourse of a Western City Region context. The chosen case study is Milan City Region (Italy) and, in particular, the Milan South Agricultural Park (PASM), taken as the relevant territorial administrative level in charge of dealing with periurban agriculture preservation and development at City-Region scale. A survey on planning tools and documents combined to a series of semistructured interviews brought to investigate the role that food currently plays in planning processes. What emerges is a strong dualism between the dominant planning paradigm and other soft and non-statutory planning spaces, like those linked to Rural Districts. While the focus of the planning policy in force in PASM is merely oriented to control change and standardize behaviours through a harsh land-use regulation, Rural Districts have been able to develop forward thinking in local food systems by building alliances and alternative forms of spatial governance with a strong attitude towards urban/ rural reciprocity.