ABSTRACT
Italy is well known for its gastronomic resources, as is its strongest agricultural basin: one of the most productive landscapes is the territory represented by EmiliaRomagna (Gallia Cispadania, the southern region of the Po Valley), reflected in its main infrastructure system: Via Emilia (also known Via Æmilia). The aim of this chapter is to determine the current conditions of the rural territory in the region and problems affecting the current socioeconomic assets in order to propose a strategy to rehabilitate the physical infrastructure of Via Emilia as a cultural landscape and food heritage site. The chapter suggests that considering the whole territory and the pattern of its agricultural plots (Roman centuriation in this case), and thus the rural grid related to its geographical characteristics, is an important basis for developing planning strategies, introducing the concept of foodshed as the indicator of analysis. An increasing number of design and research projects in landscape urbanism
address issues of food and its relationship to landscape. The production, distribution, processing, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food have consequences for landscape processes and cultures. This chapter articulates how ecological, cultural, and spatial systems have mutually influenced food and productive landscapes and vice versa, creating what we call a cultural landscape in the Emilia-Romagna region. Since the Roman Empire, Via Emilia has been the head of a complex territo-
rial organization system, in which the whole region can be considered as a single city-structure. Caused by the first ecological revolution, this territory emerged as organized without a division between urban and rural areas. Here, rurality corresponds to a certain approach to colonizing and conquering the environment using agriculture. Centuriation indicates the fundamental structure for the organization of the
territory. It is therefore understandable that the importance of the centurial “net” maintained its importance even in the post-Roman era, today resulting in the concept of rurality being considered as a diffuse organization. We believe that food production here in the region is represented not just by its
intrinsic quality, but also by its placement as a result of the intricate mythology of territorial organization. This cultural production represents the relationship between man and his environment (Gambi, 1950).
