Service Design for Food Systems: An Educational Experiment to Explore Alternatives for the Milanese Food System in Italy

Viganego Ballesteros, Lucia and de Sainz, Daniela and Selloni, Daniela (2024) Service Design for Food Systems: An Educational Experiment to Explore Alternatives for the Milanese Food System in Italy. In: P/References of Design. Cumulus conference proceedings series, 1 . Cumulus Association, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, Budapest, pp. 1763-1777. ISBN 978-952-7549-02-5

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Abstract

Prioritizing sustainable and fair food is essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. While food systems contribute significantly to climate change and social inequality, these issues also severely impact them. Moreover, urbanization intensifies these concerns in cities, highlighting the need for design interventions across various domains. In this context, the Milanese Food System presents an interesting study area. Since 2015, the city has seen alternative food networks flourish alongside the conventional supply chain. These contributions have emerged as critical transformational nodes within Milan's food system. However, together with the conventional ones, they face several challenges, mainly connected to their evolution into actual service solutions. This paper presents ten service design projects by MSc students from the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano (A.Y. 2023-2024) that challenge and rethink the current Milanese Food System and its nodes. Solutions intend to combine social and environmental sustainability in a mitigation or adaptation strategy. At the end of the course, students and the teaching staff collaborated to map their projects into what the authors define as a 'Service Master Plan' for the Milanese Food System in 2030. The plan, already shared with stakeholders in the closing event of the course, provides a comprehensive overview of the actions, people, and infrastructure necessary to implement node-related changes in the city, offering provocations for future development. The course was developed under the OnFoods project, which aims to set the basis for starting design-driven conversations with the Milanese Food System actors, igniting design activism processes that could influence decision-making policies.

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