Food and the City : The case study of Athens, Greece. Investigating the role of the food cycle and food dependencies of the contemporary city centers from the periphery

Abstract: Food and City Project is about investigating the role of the food cycle and the food dependencies from the periphery that appear in contemporary city centers. Food as a multidimensional network can have a significant impact spatially, by mapping the food miles that the food is traveling, in terms of values when there is knowledge about the value of the product that is consumed. Also, socially by highlighting important social issues such as inequalities, public health or diet issues, and environmentally,  through climate change or resource depletion. Therefore, food can create new geographies by changing relations between cities with different scales and their food provisioning systems.  The case study of this project is Athens, in Greece which is 0% food self-sufficient and that makes it dependent on the region of Attica or other regions which shifts the problem to the city-region scale. To be more specific, the food cycle in this project includes the investigation of the networks-flows and provides solutions for new production scapes, new consumption spaces, distribution flows, and waste management, at the regional, municipal, and local levels. Elaionas, an area only 2 km away from the Acropolis hill, an almost deprived and partially abandoned area with some cores of residential and industrial units but with many significant elements and potentialities, is being transformed into a new production site. Taking back his historical character as agricultural land but enhanced with different qualities (multi-scale production sites that perform as public spaces, circularity of the system) and involvements of different actors, becomes a complementary centrality of the periurban which acts internally but also has an external impact on the city.