History to eat. The foodification of the historic centre of Florence

This paper introduces the concept of foodification to the wider debate on the issues related to the touristification of cities. The idea at the base of the concept is that many cities in Europe and beyond are undergoing a transformation of their historic centre into a food-dominant retail space, in which the city's business landscape is converging towards specialized functions centred prevalently around food. This transformation emphasizes other socio-spatial dynamics connected to touristification in which central areas take on the function of a stage and display case for short-lived urban experiences aimed at visitors to the detriment of residents. After a theoretical discussion on the concept of foodification, the article takes a closer look at the different forms in which the process is apparent in the historic centre of Florence. It lays out the main results of an empirical survey and illustrates three main features of foodification: i) the expansion of catering activities; ii) the substitution of pre-existing retail businesses; iii) the targeting of food-related activities to meet the diverse types of tourism demand. Finally, the paper examines the attempts to govern the foodification process and recalls the necessity for broader public interventions to manage the tourism phenomenon.