Building Resilience: An Art–Food Hub to Connect Local Communities

Abstract

Resilience thinking is an appropriate framework when assessing the transitional potential of complex urban systems. The transformation of abandoned spaces into local hubs attracting new and innovative activities and events promotes a socioeconomic renaissance in urban communities, by stimulating adaptation to change, enhancing local resilience and strengthening urban–rural links. Under the conceptual umbrella of resilience thinking, the present study illustrates the outcomes of an integrated program of research-action aimed at urban regeneration in a medium-sized, economically disadvantaged city in Southern Italy (Battipaglia, Campania). The transformation of an abandoned building into an ‘Art–Food Hub’—a multi-purpose and creative cultural space—based on resilience thinking was the specific case analyzed in our study. Appropriate stakeholders were identified and involved in a series of field activities and workshops, with the final objective of informing a comprehensive strategy strengthening awareness to change and capacity building. More specifically, stakeholder involvement was carried out with two aims: first, to make stakeholders active participants in co-designing a Strategic Urban Planning Document for Battipaglia and, second, to evaluate to what extent the proposed initiative contributes to building local resilience. By explicitly considering cross-scale drivers of community resilience, the results of this study show how the concept of resilience can be practically applied to policy formulation and implementation.

Planning for sustainable food communities: An optimal spatial allocation study of food hubs considering the 15-min city concept—The case of LebensMittelPunkte in Berlin

“…Although in our case we are still far from achieving food sovereignty, linking urban agroecology to agricultural production would be the first link to re-connect urban and rural contexts through AFNs (López-García and González de Molina, 2020; Tornaghi and Dehaene, 2020). Therefore, the scaling out of the agroecology-based regional FHs to the entire city would foster the articulation of an ALAS, "linking territories and actors within the city-region food system" (López-García and González de Molina, 2020), which has been proposed as a resilient model to overcome the complexity of the system and increasingly achieve sustainable food systems (Vaarst et al, 2018;Quaranta et al, 2019;Bén, 2020;Blay-Palmer et al, 2021) based on the principles of sufficiency, regeneration, distribution, commons and care (McGreevy et al, 2022).…”

“…One possibility to address the two first dimensions of the 15-min city and the re-regionalization of the food system are food hubs (FHs) or "LebensMittelPunkte" (LMP) in German. Although there is no common definition of regional FHs, they can be understood as "innovative organisational arrangements capable of bridging structural holes in the agri-food markets between small producers and the consumers" (Berti and Mulligan, 2016), which have been tested empirically under real conditions in different contexts (e.g., Quaranta et al, 2019;Aramendi et al, 2020;Winarno et al, 2020).…”

“…One major challenge in establishing a city-wide network of FHs is their integration within urban planning (e.g., selecting most suitable administrative units) and the regional food production, so as to contribute to the sustainability and resilience of the city-region food system. The majority of the existing literature on FHs is theoretical and descriptive (Horst et al, 2011;Fischer et al, 2015;Berti and Mulligan, 2016;Rose, 2017;Prost, 2019;Driessen, 2021;Sgroi and Marino, 2022) or focused on assessing specific case studies (Stroink and Nelson, 2013;Cleveland et al, 2014;Quaranta et al, 2019;Conner et al, 2020;Canal Vieira et al, 2021). Therefore, there is no common understanding on how to scale out FHs, or in other words, how to study their optimal spatial allocation in a given space according to a set of criteria.…”

The Return on Investment in Social Farming: A Strategy for Sustainable Rural Development in Rural Catalonia

“…Finally, value is given to human capital with endogenous development [31] combined with formal and informal social networks that benefit from information and communication technologies (ICT) and generate social capital in RD [32]. A way of recovering abandoned spaces is exemplified by innovative projects like the "Art-Food Hub" which connects local communities [33].…”

Improving Local Food Systems through the Coordination of Agriculture Supply Chain Actors

“…RFHs play crucial roles in the local food supply chain system: providing operational services, producer services, and community/environmental services [19,20]. The differences between a regional food hub and a food distributor lie in the RFH paying more attention to economic viability, social justice, and ecological sustainability [21][22][23]. Furthermore, RFHs have social and coordination activities [16,24].…”