GREENWAYS IN AN EMERGING CITY CONTEXT: A UTOPIA OR A CHANCE FOR INNOVATION?

Greenways today represent an already diffused practice in great part of the contemporary cities’ planning policies. This constantly growing phenomenon is undoubtedly due to the multiplicity of beneficial effects that they successfully exercise within different urban environments. The present paper aims to explore their potentialities inside a relatively new type of cities’ contexts, namely the emerging ones. Factors like rapid urbanisation and mobility fluxes intensification put under hazardous pressure one of their most vulnerable systems – the green one. That is why its timely reinforcement and integration could play a crucial role in contrasting the negative trends of cities’ ecological asset progressive fragmentation and deterioration. Furthermore, greenways will be examined in a broader perspective, that goes beyond their territorial dimension, conceiving them as important catalysts for cultural and ethical urban evolution

Food Policy Councils as strategic catalyst for innovation in city- region governance and planning

During the last decade an increasing awareness regard the 'new food equation' (Morgan and Sonnino 2010) – and the very tangible challenges that entails – started growing significantly among different governments in the Global North. In only few years time a unique 'wave' of worldwide institutional attention has arisen and a new generation of urban and regional planning tools – the 'food strategies' – was born (the Toronto, London, Amsterdam and New York ones represent only a small part of them). Nevertheless, in order to make 'food system thinking' operable on governance level and turn visions into reality, a high degree of 'creativity' (Kunzmann 2004) and innovation was being required from local administrations. Perhaps one of the most compelling answers that stemmed from this pressing demand is represented by the so-called 'food policy councils' (FPCs). As Mark Winne observes: "Though lacking authority and respectable budgets, these entities have become de facto food system planning agencies" (Winne 2004: 15). The present paper will advance the hypothesis that FPCs (and alike organisations) in many occasions have constituted the strategic catalyst that made it possible for 'food planning' visions to 'travel' through different "institutional sites in a governance landscape, penetrate governance processes and sediment into governance cultures" (Healey 2007: 23). In particular, by taking advantage of relevant examples from both North-American and Western-European cities, the influence of three distinct aspects over such transformative dynamics will be examined. A first area of investigation will focus on how conditions like FPCs 'location' and 'degree of integration into a city government' (Dahlberg 1994) increase or weaken their credibility and 'persuasive' capacity. Such conditions will also be examined with relation to the necessary factors for delivering more 'electoral cycle'-proof strategies. The paper will then explore how the different strategies' predominant connotations (health, labour, 'zero carbon' growth, poverty, etc.) reflect different city departments 'sensitizing' and, accordingly, diverse food system governance 'capacities' (Mendes 2008) development. Finally, in the third part, will be addressed the relevance of 'scale' and how the 'food planning' inherent complexity is fostering the gradual engagement of multiple governance levels (e.g. the city of Boston, having already a city FPC, has asked for the establishment of a state-wide one, while New York City is doing vice-versa). The paper will conclude rising some key questions on the relationship between cities' size and the opportunities for the sustainable food paradigm to transform their 'mainstream' planning processes and cultures (Healey 2004)

Global cities re-imagining the region: the emerging "foodshed" paradigm. Exploring key challenges and opportunities for resilient communities building through food systems analysis and planning.

The present paper will examine the relationship between regional planning and the recently (re)emerged food systems territorial perspective. By means of comparative analyses, there will be discussed some of the core food planning challenges and resilient communities opportunities, currently being acknowledged within leading global cities’ contexts. In particular, it will be investigated whether and how the still fluid ‘foodshed’ concept may contribute to a more integrated and cross-sectorial regional planning stance. One of the key findings of the paper is that, today, the statement: “cities that are strategic sites in the global economy tend, in part, to disconnect from their region” (Sassen 1994: 52), is being progressively overturned. The world’s greatest innovation generators are now demonstrating a remarkable interest in weaving more regionalized and locally-sensitive food systems. What is more, the latter appear to have gathered a significant momentum and to have successfully ‘travelled’ (Healey 2007) through governance levels, at the point of influencing the governance culture. Food planning is recognized as “one of the most important social movements of the early twenty-first century in the global north” (Morgan 2009: 343). In addition, being intrinsically multi-scale and multidisciplinary in nature, regional food networks are seen as particularly strategic for multiple objectives achieving and effectively ‘more for less’ providing. Last but not least, the paper argues that the ‘foodshed’ framework is progressively being conceived as a ‘new form of spatial visioning’ and a tool for ‘relational geographies’ capturing

From project to process: school gardens as vehicle for territorial sustainability. A case study from the Milan metropolitan area.

The study will examine at first the great importance of food education by framing it in the wider context of some globally present critical phenomena. Accelerated urban population growth, dramatic shrinking of rural areas and food systems as well as progressive unsustainability are today profoundly altering our territories and ways of living. A key occasion for a worldwide reflection upon the latter is represented by the Milan 2015 EXPO, that however should be imagined not as limited temporal event but instead should be a stimulus for creating a higher awareness. Accordingly to this vision, in its core a part of the paper will analyze a bottom-up design and social experience, located in the Milan metropolitan area, that chooses the schools' network as a strategic mean for both future generations education and adult public sensitizing. In particular, the study will illustrate how a micro-architectural project (vertical garden prototype), if intended as a process (discussion and action catalyst involving simultaneously designers, public and private actors, and children), has the potential to address in effective way the poor conditions of current food education. The vertical garden, realized by the same students, is in fact conceived as a starting point for exploring broader themes like: food systems, water in urban environment, food packaging and recycling. Thus, the process goes beyond the school garden boundaries and aims at real positive impact for the overall territorial development. Within the conclusive section the paper will discuss the main difficulties to tackle with, and the potentialities to be valorized and experimented in other contexts

The challenge of integrating sustainable food systems and spatial planning: strengthening the European research agenda

Twelve years after the Pothukuchi and Kaufmann seminal study, the “food system” has not only ceased to be a “stranger to the planning field” (2000), but it has become the trigger for “one of the most important social movements of the early twenty-first century in the global north” (Morgan, 2009): “food planning”. Indeed, in less than ten-years-time: more than hundred articles on the topic have been published in international planning and architecture scientific journals and magazines; leading planning associations on both sides of the Atlantic, as APA and AESOP, have established specific sustainable food planning focus groups (2005, 2009); and a dedicated World Town Planning Day conference was recently held (2010). What is more, this growing research interest did not evolve in isolation, but instead was coupled by an equally relevant statutory engagement: in fact, during the same period, more than thirty urban and regional food system strategies were released by different local administrations worldwide and, importantly, the first planning-department-led one was pioneered in Europe. By fully acknowledging the relevance of this dynamic food system planning momentum, the present paper will draw the attention to one of its most challenging and hitherto under-researched nodes: the effective integration of the food prism into the spatial planning rationale and field of practices. In order to address this challenge, three emblematic metropolitan contexts – Amsterdam, New York and Milan – and their recent advancements in this direction will be closely explored. In particular, some insights into the analytic, design and organisational dimensions of the integration will be contingently provided. Last but not least, through the specific case-studies examination, the paper will advance the proposition that for further strengthening the European research agenda a twofold approach is needed. On one side, a greater dialogue across the emerging landscape of European food planning experiences should be sought and encouraged, while, on the other, the identification of valuable knowledge-building opportunities ought to span beyond geographical limits

Scientific and Practical Conference "Challenges in the Education of Masters of Pharmacy"

Th conference is organised with the fiancial support of European Social Fund within the Project BG051PO001-3.1.07-0046 `Updating and approbation of the curricula of the Faculty of Pharmacy, Medical University of Varna according to the needs of the pharmaceutical business and the requirements of the labor market