Agri-food regeneration becomes urban

This year's regeneration starts from the outskirts of Turin. The choice of location is anything but casual: Parco Dora.

After a long history at the Lingotto, the event will take place outdoors and in a place that symbolizes the regeneration of the post-industrial city.

Where up until the 1990s, factories and production plants stood, today there is a large green park which, for five days, will be the home of the international event organized by Slow Food, the Piedmont Region and the City of Turin and dedicated to agriculture, livestock, food production and environmental policies. 

To regenerate does not mean to rebuild, but to be reborn

Regeneration according to Slow Food is a transversal theme. Cities can do this by blurring the gap between food production and consumption. We will talk about regeneration from many points of view , favoring a (eco) systemic approach and focusing on what is, and what must be, power.

The regeneration of the Dora Park

post-industrial park of over 35 hectares, located in the Spina 3 area and obtained from the abandoned sites of five Fiat and Michelin factories, the Parco Dora is today at center of a transformation and urban redevelopment project. For the first time Terra Madre Salone del Gusto lands in this space of the city, and the choice is strongly symbolic.

The industrial past, greenery and water

Parco Dora is a hybrid place, which maintains sediments from the recent industrial past (iron canopies, large rust-colored pillars, a cooling tower ...), sometimes transforms them (an old chimney is now the bell tower of the church of the Holy Face, the former Michelin canteen now houses the Museum of the Environment) and places them next to meadows, trees, basins and streams.

In addition to green, the luxuriant nature that recaptures the spaces once occupied by impactful production activities, water is the other fundamental element. The Dora, the river that runs through the park and which gives it its name, was sealed by concrete, now it has been unearthed, freed, regenerated.

The metamorphosis demonstrates a regeneration already underway

An extraordinary metamorphosis, created in 2004 by a team of architects, engineers, light designers, artists, coordinated by the German landscape architect Peter Latz. The ideal context for the 2022 edition of Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, because it demonstrates that regeneration is already underway and that our first task is to recognize it.

Urban regeneration will be discussed in the conference " Cities that change. Regeneration Models "