Is it possible to combine a quality tourism and culinary experience with responsible resource consumption and land enhancement? Can food and wine contribute to making a city more vibrant?
When addressing the issue of sustainability in Venice, we often consider tourist flows and environmental and social impacts, but rarely do we discuss food. The predominant image is of a city choked by mass tourism.
Instead, a city's food and wine offerings should be integrated into the narrative it wishes to offer. Storytelling should start from its positive peculiarities to attract new people and encourage new residents.
The new webinar "Venice, from the Anthropocene to the Future. Tradition and Sustainability in Venetian Menus." by Homo Faber Economy, the project for the city of Venice promoted by Ca' Foscari University in partnership with Fondazione di Venezia and Upskill 4.0, focused on these aspects, and tried to take a step forward on the future of food between innovation and sustainability.
Francesca Checchinato, associate professor in business economics and management and co-founder of the Agrifood Management and Innovation Lab at Ca' Foscari University Venice, showed how a food and wine proposal can be leverage for a new attractiveness of the city, where much is already being done anyway.
One should not just tell about the characteristics of products, but should tell about the benefits that particular products have: telling in an appealing way why they are healthier, tastier, and more wholesome, not assuming that visitors to this city will understand the more complex aspects.
The goal must be, first and foremost, to welcome visitors with quality, artisanal catering that works on processing the products of its territory in the right way and knows how to use waste materials.
According to data from the Aigrim Observatory presented with Deloitte, Italy is the second largest restaurant market in Europe with a value of more than 82 billion euros in 2023. An important figure that clashes with the image of Venetian catering, often associated with tourist traps.
To change this perception, all players in the Venetian food and wine supply chain must be educated to tell the story of Venice differently, restaurateurs and caterers, chefs, waiters, suppliers, moving beyond a declinist narrative that Mario Isnenghi discusses in his "If Venice Lives".
Alessandra Marcon, PhD in urban planning and a post-doc in the Cities 2030 project at IUAV University of Venice, also spoke on the webinar.
Marcon is part of a research project aimed at evolving Venice's current food patterns toward more sustainable and resilient models.
Two types of workshops were designed: the Policy Lab, which involves the construction, design and promotion of food policies and processes to accompany their emergence, and the Living Lab, real living labs in which to work closely with local food system actors to build innovative services and processes.
The Venice Lagoon Food Atlas is a living lab and a key tool for understanding what is happening in the lagoon, identifying innovative approaches and driving change. The Atlas is something open and interactive, a co-design project that aims to collect data and information about the food system, highlight innovative experiences and promote new ones.
Venice is no longer self-sufficient from the food point of view. This change has been accentuated over the past 20 years and has been brought about by the increased demand for food from the restaurant and hotel industry. This has meant that supply is mainly through markets beyond the local scale.
The Atlas is intended to be a model for understanding and making easily accessible a snapshot of the complexity of the Venice area and a tool for understanding its evolution and possible developments.
The ultimate goal of these tools is to reverse the storytelling of the city and put it in a positive light, emphasizing the goodness and typicality of the area.
Venice, despite its food and wine reputation that has been negative for years, now needs to enhance its many positive experiences and develop a more refined city branding image.
Project "Homo Faber Economy" - Code 2120-0001-727-2023 - CUP H77G23000350002 - PR Veneto ESF+ 2021-2027 - DGR. 727/2023 VENICE I.C.O.N.A.