Three Days in Turin
MULTIPLICITY -72- FIELDWORK
by Jay Skardis [CRP]
Castello del Valentino. Source: Politecnico di Torino.
The Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) convenes their annual conferences every summer. The main conference, for professors, was held in Stockholm this year, with workshops for PhD. students and professionals on specific disciplines held in rotating locations throughout Europe. This year’s workshop on Sustainable Food Planning, a relatively new field, was held in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, and hosted by the Polytechnic University of Turin Department of Regional Urban Studies and Planning.
The workshop was held over three days in June, in the Castello del Valentino, the UNESCO world heritage site that houses the engineering school of the University. Arriving there through a series of unexpected events, from being invited to submit a short paper for presentation, to having the paper accepted, and with thanks to the Pratt Graduate Student Engagement Fund, I found myself participating in this event with a group of about 20 people visiting from various locations within Italy, and several other European countries, as well as Indonesia. The majority of attendees were PhD. students, currently working on their theses on food planning related topics, with a few participants already in the field in both local and global organizations.
