Reconnecting Cities and Food Production: Multilevel Governance Challenges in Italian Local Food Policies

Local Food Policies (LFPs) in Italy constitute a key arena for experimentation with sustainable food system governance. Despite their relevance, LFPs are frequently characterized by sectoral and partial approaches and by a limited integration between urban and rural areas. Policy design and implementation tend to privilege urban-based dynamics and localized decision-making processes, while underestimating the role of food production territories and the economic, social, and institutional relations that connect them to cities. This weak integration limits the potential of LFPs as instruments of food democracy and multilevel governance, while reinforcing socioeconomic imbalances across territories and reducing the resilience of local food networks. Moreover, these policies tend to neglect the promotion of sustainable diets, ensuring universal access to nutritionally balanced and ethically produced food. The academic literature on LFPs largely mirrors these practices, focusing primarily on individual local experiences and on narratives produced by promoting actors. As a result, inter-territorial relations, coordination mechanisms, and cross-level policy interactions remain underexplored. Building on these gaps, an ongoing research initiative within the Italian programme RetePAC develops a multilevel analysis aimed at identifying interactions and synergies between LFPs and other local policies supporting agri-food production, with particular attention to governance arrangements and inclusive decision-making processes. The analysis focuses on selected case studies characterized by significant interactions between cities that have adopted LFPs and organized rural territories, such as bio-districts, food districts, LEADER Local Action Groups, and unions of municipalities. The study examines the nature of these relationships, the actors involved, and how participatory governance arrangements - such as food policy councils, multi-stakeholder forums, and co-design processes - shape cross-level interactions. Particular attention is paid to how participatory mechanisms and coordination tools shape these interactions and to the conditions under which they contribute to more inclusive and coherent food governance. Within this framework, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), both in its current configuration and in relation to the ongoing reform process, is interpreted as a potential enabling factor for strengthening multilevel governance. The CAP may help reconnect places of sustainable and high-quality food production with urban contexts where a growing demand for such food is expressed, thereby supporting more integrated and democratic food policy arrangements. An additional analytical step involves reversing the perspective - which often prioritize urban issues over rural ones - by starting from agricultural production areas to identify explicit or latent relationships with cities that have implemented LFPs. This approach makes it possible to reveal synergies that are currently implicit or fragmented but could be activated through targeted policy instruments and participatory governance processes. To support this analysis, the study integrates existing territorial mappings with digital tools for network and relational analysis, enabling the visualization of governance patterns, strategic trajectories, and opportunities for enhanced coordination across levels and sectors. This study provides empirical evidence and conceptual insights into how LFPs, when embedded in multilevel and participatory governance frameworks, may evolve from predominantly urban policy tools into democratic innovation devices capable of improving both the inclusiveness and the effectiveness of food policies across territories.