Políticas alimentarias urbanas y espacios metropolitanos: El caso de Milán

After Expo 2015, Milan is attempting to change its global image by combining conventional vertical development with a new narrative based on the relationship between urban and peri-urban areas. In this context, the Milan Urban Food Policy (MUFP) has raised an important question for the city´s future: how to build new rural-urban linkages that strengthen the interaction at the urban and metropolitan scales. This paper has two main objectives: to investigate how change is taking place in the food policies in Milan after Expo 2015, and to discuss several issues related to the implementation of the MUFP that present potential dialectical tension between the urban and the metropolitan areas. A specific focus is the analysis of the interaction between the MUFP and the peri-urban protected areas, which are considered as active players in the development of hybrid metropolitan spaces. The research is based on a qualitative methodology aimed at understanding the effects of the MUFP beyond the narratives developed by institutional documents. Using the MUFP as a framework, this study investigates whether and how policies based on food and agriculture can produce a specific territorial effect in the Milan Metropolitan Area. The peri-urban area is of specific interest because many forms of land and landscape planning inspired by an integrated vision of human and natural issues have now been experimented with there for several decades. Milan offers the opportunity to observe many controversial issues associated with governance dynamics, in particular the relationships between urban and rural spaces. Here lies the value of a case study that could in the coming years serve as an example for other European cities regarding the implementation of food policies on a large scale. This will be possible if the framework implemented to date evolves into a long-term policy and the risks and weaknesses described in this paper are overcome.