Regulating Urban Foodscapes During Covid-19 Pandemic. Privatization or Reorganization of Public Spaces?

Abstract

This paper describes how the municipality of Milan incentivized the occupation of public spaces by private activities. From a methodological viewpoint, this study adopts a neo-institutionalist view on “foodscapes”. The approach is mainly conceptual but empirically illustrated, to discuss the spatial implications at stake. The first section (§ 1) provides an introduction on how Covid-19 pandemics made the relations that link objects and people in urban spaces more visible. To do this, the focus of our attention will be on restaurant businesses, which are among those that have had to review their way of working radically in the face of specific epidemiological issues but also the more general changes taking place in urban areas during the pandemic. The second section (Sect. 2) is devoted to the spatial analysis of emerging foodscapes in Milan, highlighting the distribution of restaurants outdoors (i.e. on urban streets). The third section (Sect. 3) discusses the issues affecting local businesses and restaurant entrepreneurs in Italy in the aftermath of the first year of the pandemic. Section (Sect. 4) concludes.