From the “City of Food” to Foodification: Uncovering Latent Resistance in Bologna.

The neoliberal development is shaping the everyday urban places, around the globe. In the aftermath of the great recession, Bologna, strong of its culinary heritage, has encouraged, through a well-organized narrative, the arrival of new investments by focusing on the idea of the “City of Food”. This project has given the go-ahead to the foodification of the city, which has triggered in this local case other typical neoliberal processes as well: gentrification, touristification, platform urbanism, and new economic criminalization. However, a heterogeneous milieu of alternative collective actors (grassroots urban organizations, agroecological groups, food movements, individual citizens), is increasingly active in resisting the process of foodification. Through the present contribution, we aim at investigating how alternative collective actors engage in contesting foodification contribute to the emergence of situated forms of conflict and resistance. Our research question asks: how can latent and often depoliticized conflicts in the field of food reveal overlooked dynamics of resistance to urban neoliberalization?