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Feeding the city through events: Expo 2015 seen from Turin. – Among the various Italian cities that have employed events as a means of continuous relaunch and repositioning on the national and international stage, Milan and Turin have hosted the most significant mega-events in the last 20 years, as Expo 2015 in Milan and the 2006 Winter Olympics Games (WOG) in Turin and the forthcoming Milano-Cortina WOG 2026.
Especially on the Turin side, the relationship was mostly experienced in competitive terms, with a series of events and related specialisations, which originated in Turin and then migrated (‘subtracted’ from the Turin point of view) to Milan in particular.
This paper will examine the theme of food, which is central to the Expo 2015 event and to various minor events hosted in the two cities. Among these, the Turin-based kermesse Terra Madre (since 2004) – Salone del Gusto (since 1996) – stands out.
As a result of Expo, Milan has become one of the world’s leading food capitals, the first Italian city to adopt a structured food policy, and the founder of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) that started in October 2015 and by January 2024 had reached no less than 279 cities around the globe, including almost thirty in Italy. Turin has repeatedly at-tempted to represent itself as a food capital, also thanks to Terra Madre-Salone del gusto. Furthermore, it was the first Italian city to include the ‘right to food’ in its municipal statute.
This paper will attempt to deconstruct the narratives on the food-city re-lationship in Milan and Turin, largely triggered by the two major events. In the context of renewed competition for the 2026 Olympic bid, it will question the possibilities of collaboration around food spaces.

The countryside revenge. From the typical economy to the post-modern eating. – The increasing of the homologated processes of the production field and the food consumption are explanatory factors of a flowing back thought process that brings to consider food again in a stronger ethic and local key and environmental sustainability. In this evaluative scene of groceries traditional, handmade, biological, natural, zero kilometer, short supply chain and local categories, incorporating an additional quid to the industrial groceries, seem to answer with greater adequacy to the satisfaction of needs felt essential to the safety of traditions, nature and human wellbeing. Values for wich consumers are willing to pay an higher price with the purpose to respect them or incorporate them. As long as they are able to perceive their quality, identity and origin with an efficient story that bring them to market. A story that, in an increasing and careful measure, aims to bring out the intangible components of food that end up endowing it with an economic, nutritional, gustatory, health and identity surplus value.