A Relational Food Network: Strategy and Tools to Co-design a Local Foodshed

This chapter reports on an ongoing project aimed at starting up a network of local food services and sustainable production and consumption practices linking the city of Milan with its peri-urban area. “Feeding Milan: Energies for Change,” as the inititive is called, aims to transform Milan into a local foodshed, a real-scale living experiment of a sustainable food system. In the chapter we discuss the reasons why a relational and convivial strategy has been chosen to start this process of cultural and technical transformation. Then we describe what tools are being used to involve the different stakeholders in an extensive participatory design strategy, whose “last mile” of interaction is always a “human mile,” even though supported by digital technologies. After offering an overview of the services currently under progress, we turn to the design and prototype of the digital platform and, in particular, of the vegetable foodbox program.