ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

Universities Leveraging Surplus Food for Socio-Economic Inclusion in Cities: Lessons from the Off-Campus Initiative

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Oral Track 16 | FOOD

Speaker

Dr Stefano Quaglia (Politecnico di Milano)

Description

Universities can play a pivotal role in advancing sustainable urban food systems by combining research, education, and strategic alliances to enhance community awareness and foster innovative practices. The Off-Campus initiative, launched in 2018 by Politecnico di Milano, exemplifies this potential, serving as a laboratory for piloting innovative approaches to support local communities.
Within this framework, the SOSpesa and Bioloop projects centered on the recovery, redistribution, and valorization of surplus food as tools to promote employment opportunities, training programs, and food assistance for vulnerable individuals at the neighborhood level. These initiatives were implemented at two Off-Campus locations: NoLo, situated within the Crespi market in northeast Milan, and Cascina Nosedo, positioned at the interface between Milan’s peri-urban agricultural park and its dense urban core in the southeast.
Adopting an action research approach, the projects integrated diverse methods, including interviews, focus groups, and operational workshops, to investigate national and international good practices and engage local communities and associations actively. This participatory methodology ensured that the initiatives were grounded in local needs and capacities.
The findings underscore universities’ capacity to drive the creation of circular economy mechanisms in collaboration with local associations and merchants, effectively addressing the needs of vulnerable groups. However, they also reveal critical challenges in sustaining long-term socio-economic inclusion processes. While food surplus valorization can act as a powerful catalyst, its impact is constrained when initiatives are short-term and lack adequate public incentives. Ensuring the durability and scalability of such projects requires sustained public support and structural integration into broader urban policies.