Proiezioni, sovrapposizioni e convivenze negli spazi del cibo della valle del Tronto

The contribution aims at describing the food system in the Tronto valley, a low-density context characterized by the presence of small and medium-sized centres strongly integrated in a territorial and functional unitary system, and by some important facilities serving the conventional food market. A qualitative research made of semi-structured interviews addressed to a sample of local inhabitants, field explorations and photographic investigations, leads to analyse the relationship between food practices and settlement form. The study shows that the proximity between residential spaces and spaces for agricultural and livestock production plays an important role in determining the food habits of local population. It demonstrates that this proximity is multi-scalar and it is evident both at the scale of the building typology and at the one of settlement. By combining urban and rural uses, houses, factories and agricultural fields, the settlement configuration of the valley, on one hand, favours some reciprocal relations between producers and local consumers and, on the other, it produces some unusual situations of coexistence between local and global food spaces.