*Experimental Living and Housing Forms: Cities of the Future as Sustainable and Integrated… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113213*

social tensions, food crises, and the soaring increase in diseases related to obesity and unhealthy eating habits, particularly among low-income groups [18].

Cities are currently considered as the major engines of economic progress. As a result, rural places are assigned a marginal role. This polarity leads to the widening of the gap between cities and their territorial contexts (including supply), disrupting the material and immaterial flows that connect them to rural areas [19]. Already in the nineteenth century, Marx had theorized a fracture in the metabolic interaction between humanity and the rest of nature as a result of capitalist agricultural production and the rising divide between town and country [20]. This fracture is known as the metabolic rift. More precisely, this rift results in the loss of biodiversity, depletion of natural resources, and environmental degradation in urban environments [21], drawing attention to the need to rethink sustainable local agri-food systems and thus redefine relations and a balance between the city and the countryside.

Since the relationship between places of production and consumption, between city and rural, metropolitan and peri-urban areas, is a critical node in food policy [22], it is essential to strengthen this link within a more globalized and interconnected economy. The significance of physical and organizational proximity in different social, cultural, and economic relationships must be rediscovered. The emphasis on production, the traditional urban–rural dualism, and an increasingly global and de-territorialized agri-industrial system has resulted in the disappearance of food from reflections on urban development, after having shaped and molded the form and substance of cities for centuries [23]. Indeed, in cities, there is (little) awareness of the act of consuming, whereas the other phases of the supply chain tend to be overlooked [24].

To reverse this trend, as early as 1997 the European Commission began advocating for a "more versatile, sustainable, competitive, and widespread European model of agriculture." The Farm to Fork EU Strategy is at the heart of the European Green Deal and aims to accelerate our transition to a sustainable food system. It addresses comprehensively the challenges of sustainable food systems and recognizes the inextricable links between healthy people, healthy societies, and a healthy planet. This model has found application not only in a wide variety of farm facilities, land cultivation systems, and range of products, but also in the spread of new multifunctional rural and urban settlements. The new patterns of productive settlement have led us to rethink the role of agriculture in urban areas and to refine the design and implementation of experimental housing-productive settlements, characterized by a long-term gradual transformation of living and housing models.

Food Trails is a European Union (EU)-funded Horizon 2020 project, bringing together a consortium of 19 European partners, including 11 cities, 3 universities, and 5 organizations. The project is rooted in the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP), an international mayors' agreement, and aims to enable cities to reimagine, develop, and implement sustainable, healthy, and inclusive food policies. Each partner city runs a pilot project, a "Living Lab," which seeks to codesign and co-implement food actions integrated with other local sectoral works and aligned with the Farm to Fork EU Strategy and the priorities of the EU-FOOD 2030 Policy: nutrition, climate, circularity, and innovation. Grenoble-Alpes Metropole, for instance, has a unique food system linked to its geography. Around 15% of its mountainous territory is covered by farmable land, and the local government sought to capitalize on it to improve diets, sustainability and create short food chains. The Metropolitan Agricultural Strategy 2015–2020 implemented by the Metropole aims to re-territorialize its food system, promoting sustainable and high-quality farming in rural municipalities

while connecting them to other metropole cities via short supply chains, supporting farmers in adapting agriculture and food production to climate change, and reducing the environmental impact of local horticulture in order to reduce GHG emissions by 2050. Moreover, it seeks to develop a participatory scheme from a Food and Agriculture Policy and Strategy (FAPS) toward a Common Food Policy.

Considering the current transformations cities are experiencing, the key challenge for future decades is to feed a growing population in an ethical and socially, economically, environmentally sustainable way [25]. Therefore, the search for an alternative food paradigm through food policies based on relocation, critical consumption (fresh, local, organic), and nutrition education is necessary. Relocation does not mean achieving complete food self-sufficiency, but rather producing locally a greater portion of the basic food demand. This purpose underlies policies such as urban and peri-urban farm protection and promotion, alternative food networks, optimization of distribution and logistics stages in a short supply chain perspective, and public procurement.

The EU Joint Research Centre report "Farmers of the Future" [26] reflects on the future of agriculture in the coming decades and what characteristics farmers will have in 2040. It highlights "the emergence of more diverse and experimental agriculture models to address environmental challenges and respond to different consumption patterns."

This change toward a wider range of housing types integrated with extensive agricultural facilities, in addition to having strong implications for governance, requires adaptation of farming and livestock systems to local specificity. Three factors must be considered in terms of producing food for consumption: assessment of socio-ecological changes, interpreted as typological-spatial variation in housing and settlements; recognition of multifunctionality and supply of public goods as intrinsic tasks associated to housing; and creation of a suitable governance framework capable of systematizing all aspects of production (energy, labor, agriculture, and livestock) integrated into experimental housing models.
