The role of a venueised approach to encouraging citizen support for an urban food strategy – case insights from the Aalborg Gastronarium: WG1. Sustainable Food Systems: approaches, policies and practices

There is a growing interest among policy makers in developing food strategies for “places” and increasingly cities and regions are adopting policies that aims at creating unique identities for these places. But can urban food strategies be developed and governed only at the policy level? And if not what role does citizens play in that process? The Gastronarium study examines how more powers of society can become involved in food policy making. It builds on case insights from the development of the Aalborg Gastronarium – part of the Boxtown initiative. The initiative includes a street food component, a food market component – and the Gastronarium component. The last part aims at creating research-based learning and experience in the food and gastro science area. Furthermore, the goal of Gastronarium is to get a better understanding on, how the modern consumer experiences the nature, food and environment in regarding to the everyday life. This was done by mapping the views and expectations of representatives the local consumers to a food and gastro science related experience- and learning center. Based on these data, we constructed a number of personas of potential future users. The aim of the study was to examine to what extent the case of the Gastronarium program at Boxtown – an upcoming food hotspot in the city of Aalborg - can facilitate citizen support for an urban food strategy and at the same time stimulate food literacy. The study finds that there is a considerable interest among important institutions and stakeholder in the municipality of Aalborg to support and potentially use the proposed learning environment for gastro science and that such an undertaking might contribute positively to the food strategy development in the city.