Cities

FUSILLI brings together 12 cities in a knowledge sharing and learning community to jointly address the challenges of the food system transformation. The core ambition of these 12 cities is to overcome barriers regarding the development and the implementation of integrated, systemic food policies that support the transition towards sustainable food systems in urban, peri-urban and nearby rural areas.

As part of FUSILLI, the cities will be empowered to implement innovative and personalised policies and actions, placing citizens in the heart of the process. Each city will thus develop a Living Lab as an open innovation ecosystem with the objective to implement different innovative actions through all stages of the food chain, including production and processing, distribution and logistics, consumption, food loss and waste, as well as governance.

What is a Living Lab?

FUSILLI aims to make food systems in and around cities more sustainable. One of the main methods used to achieve this are Living Labs.

Living Labs are based on the idea that the important societal questions of our time can only be answered when different sectors work together: science, policy, industry and society. Living Labs are places of experimentation, where hypotheses can be tested. However, they are not situated in a sterile, isolated lab environment but in the real world where the user interacts with the topic of the living lab. For instance, if it is the goal to offer an environmentally-friendly selection of meals in canteens that is appealing to its daily visitors, the living lab would be installed in a canteen.

Living Labs are user-centered. This means that the canteen visitors in this example would not be observed by experts as research objects, but that they would be involved as active partners in the innovation process of co-creating a new selection of meals. This ensures that the result of the innovation process fits to the users’ needs.

A Living Lab can consist of many different smaller demonstration sites. In FUSILLI, most involved partners work on different aspects of the food system to achieve a truly systemic transition. Thus, one Living Lab can have separate small demonstration sites in different places or on various aspects of the food chain: production and processing, distribution, consumption, waste management and governance.

Living Labs are suitable to work on all steps of the innovation process: development of ideas, testing of prototypes and evaluation. As they are already situated in real-life settings, up-scaling solutions can be easier and quicker than with other innovation methods. In addition to that, these kind of solutions are easy to replicate in other surroundings. Therefore, local solutions developed in projects like FUSILLI are valuable resources for other cities both within the project and beyond.

The 12 cities where the FUSILLI Living Labs will be developed are:

The Acropolis of Athens. Photo by Vasilis D. Vasiliadis

Athens

The Municipality of Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece, with a population of 664,046 people (2011 census) and an area of 38.96 km2, forming the core of the metropolitan City of Athens (approx. 2.7 million residents and occupies an area of 412km2), located within the Attica Basin. The City of Athens belongs to the Prefecture of Attica. The Mayor and the City Council govern Cities, while a Regional Governor and a Council govern Regions…

Bishop's Garden (Jardim do Paço Episcopal). Photo Castelo Branco City Hall

Castelo Branco

Situated in a central position between north and south of Portugal, Castelo Branco, which has been inhabited since the Bronze Age, sets a border between two markedly distinct cultural regions since remote times: the world of granite and the world of schist.
Castelo Branco is one of the largest municipalities in the country and capital of district in Central Portugal, with 35,000 inhabitants in its urban perimeter…

Aerial view of Differdange. Photo by @ville de Differdange.

Differdange

Differdange (Luxembourgish: Déifferdeng) is a town and municipality in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It belongs to the canton of Esch-sur-Alzette and is located in the south of Luxembourg in the border triangle with Belgium and France. With almost 28,000 inhabitants Differdange is the third largest city in the country. The municipality is proud of its multiculturalism – over 110 nationalities make up more than 50 percent of the population…

Kharkiv City View

Kharkiv

 Kharkiv is a modern metropolis located in eastern Ukraine. It was founded in 1654 and today is a leading center of the agro-industrial sector, intellectual and educational activities, IT-hub of modern Ukraine. The State Statistics Service estimates that Kharkiv has a population of over 1.4 million and an area of 350 km2. The unofficial name of Kharkiv is “First Capital” or “Eastern Capital”…

Country side of Kolding. Photo Kolding

Kolding

The Municipality of Kolding is placed in the Southern part of Jutland and Denmark and is a versatile area of both coastline and country side with 15 towns and housing approx. 92,000 inhabitants. Kolding City is the largest city in the municipality with 58,000 citizens. The city has a rich topography with a Fjord to the East and a large valley to the West and with a creek running through the city. Kolding is an education city representing a large variety of schools…

Rural Area Nilufer City. Photo by Nilufer Municipality

Nilufer

Nilufer is a district of metropolitan city Bursa which is with 2.9 m inhabitants, the 4th largest city of Turkey and located in the north western part of the country. Bursa is also the 4th largest industrial centre in the country with about 10% of exports; specializing in automotive/textiles/machine tools/ household white goods clusters. Nilufer district is also one of the newest and rapidly developing parts of the city of Bursa…

Downtown Oslo. Photo by Oscar Daniel Rangel on Unsplash

Oslo

Oslo is the capital of Norway and the country’s largest city with just over 700,000 inhabitants. Since 2015, Oslo has a City Government cooperation between the Labour Party, the Green Party and the Socialist Left Party. Their vision is “a greener, warmer and more creative city with room for everyone” (Municipal plan, 2018). Oslo’s politicians are ambitious in transforming the food system…

Rijeka. Picture by Borko Vukosav. Credits@Rijeka 2020 – EPK.

Rijeka

Rijeka is a city with a turbulent history which has developed into a unique, multinational, multi-religious and multicultural city.
City of Rijeka is the third largest city in Croatia with the population of 128,624 inhabitants. It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and situated on an area of 44 km². Rijeka is an industrial, administrative, cultural and university centre of the region which serves about 400,000 inhabitants…

Foro Romano. Photo by Archivio Fotografico Campidoglio

Rome

Roma Capitale, well known also as The Eternal City, is the Capital of Italy. The Municipality of Rome rules an area of 1,287.36 km², occupied by 2.87 million inhabitants. Rome is also probably the largest agricultural municipality in Europe, since more than 65% of its territory is green area, half of which is used for agricultural activities: a total agricultural area of appr. 58,000 ha improving urban resilience. In fact, ROMA was awarded….

Panoramic view of Donostia. Credit: IStock by Getty Images

San Sebastian

San Sebastian is internationally renown for its gastronomic excellence, welcoming a large number of visitors each year with the consequent impact on the city’s economy. The agri-food sector of the city and its urban environment takes on particular relevance. The city council is focusing on the analysis and implementation of the food strategy….

Drone view on Tammerkoski. Photo by Marko Kallio

Tampere

Tampere is a comfortable and vibrant city of 240 000 residents. The city centre is surrounded by beautiful lake and ridge scenery, sited on an isthmus between lakes Pyhäjärvi and Näsijärvi. With a growing population, the city is a hub for students, innovation and sustainability. Testing new ideas in Living lab and test bed conditions are good examples of the innovative development done in the city…

Turin seen from the top of its hill. The Mole Antonelliana, symbol of the city, stands out in the landscape. Photo by Fabio Fistarol

Turin

The city of Turin (pop. 886.837) is the capital of Piedmont region located in the northwestern part of Italy, near to the Alps. Since the 1990s Turin has been transformed from an automotive industrial centre into a city of innovation and culture, gaining more and more prominence both at Italian and European level.
The metropolitan area of Turin has one of the most interesting food systems in Italy, concerning local food and gastronomy culture, innovative food businesses…