MADRE project and Metropolitan Agriculture in the territorial system of Bologna: a socio-cultural overview

The chapter briefly describes the MADRE project, its theoretical premises, and main objectives, as well as its operative framework, highlighting the role of the Metropolitan Agriculture (MA) in facing the main challenges of our Era. Authors thus introduce the specific concept of MA, considering it as an “infrastructure” for the up-coming sustainable cities, which needs to be fitted on each specific environmental and socio-economic context. For this reason, in the further paragraphs, a context analysis of the specific territorial system of the Metropolitan area of Bologna is carried out, which includes considerations about its orographic characteristics, urbanization, related Public policies, and especially socio-economic and cultural dimensions of the area, even including agri-civism and "agri-culture".