2026 EDITION
CONFLICT MAPPING WORKSHOP
AIM AND CHALLENGE OF THE WORKSHOPS
The 2026 workshops explored how design research can contribute to making urban food ecosystems more visible and legible by identifying and mapping the conflicts, tensions and inequalities that shape them.
Building on the approach developed in the previous edition, the 2026 workshops expanded the scope of conflict mapping by considering both explicit and latent conflicts. While explicit conflicts can be more readily identified through publicly documented actors, positions and disputes, latent conflicts may emerge from less visible tensions embedded in infrastructures, governance arrangements, resource distribution, working conditions and everyday urban practices.
The workshops focused on desk-based research and online data collection. Rather than directly involving stakeholders or conducting field-based participatory activities, students investigated their selected topics by collecting, comparing and interpreting information available through online sources, public datasets, institutional websites, reports, news, maps and other publicly accessible materials.
The main challenge was therefore to develop research strategies capable of identifying, analysing and spatially mapping food-related conflicts through existing documentary and online evidence, exploring how different forms of inequality and tension become visible—or remain latent—within the urban geography of food systems.
Through lectures, collective research, online data collection, critical analysis and visualisation, the groups developed their own conflict-mapping strategies. The resulting maps connected food practices and services with urban space, infrastructures, institutions, communities and patterns of inequality, using mapping as a design research device for investigating and visualising local food ecosystems.
LOOK HERE FOR THE FINAL RESULTS:
MILAN
The Milan workshop involved 14 students from different Master’s programmes at Politecnico di Milano, with backgrounds spanning Product Service System Design, Urban Planning and Policy Design, Landscape Design, Digital and Interaction Design, Architecture, Integrated Product Design and Management of Built Environment.
Following introductory and theoretical lectures, students worked in groups on different aspects of the Milan food system. Each group developed a desk-based research strategy to identify and map food-related conflicts through online and publicly available information, examining how these conflicts are expressed across the city and its urban geography.
TOPICS
1. Affordability@University — Food access and affordability around Polimi
The group investigated the relationship between students’ food practices around the Bovisa campus and university development and food governance. Through online research and the collection of publicly available information, the group mapped food-related activities and prices around the campus, using these data to explore questions of affordability, accessibility and cultural diversity in the university food environment.
Students: Name Surname, Name Surname, name Surname.
2. Food Waste & Open Markets
The group explored the relationship between Milan’s open-air markets and food-waste management. The research considered both conflicts that can be more readily identified through publicly documented actors and activities, and more structural or latent tensions related to the absence or uneven distribution of food-waste management infrastructures and systems across the city. Online sources were used to identify relevant places, organisations, infrastructures and relationships within the urban food system.
Students: Name Surname, Name Surname, name Surname.
3. Food Delivery Workers
The group investigated the relationship between food-delivery platforms and the working and living conditions of delivery riders. Using publicly available online information and spatial data, the research developed three interconnected layers: food-delivery demand and high-demand areas, the geography of riders’ residential hubs, and the availability of supporting infrastructures such as meeting points and e-bike charging facilities. The resulting analysis highlighted spatial mismatches between food-delivery demand, riders’ presence and the infrastructures available to support their work.
Students: Name Surname, Name Surname, name Surname.
FINAL RESULTS
The final outputs took the form of urban conflict maps developed through desk-based research and online data collection. By combining spatial information with qualitative evidence, publicly documented actors, infrastructures and contextual data, the maps explored how different conflicts and inequalities can be identified and visualised through existing sources.
The maps function as design research devices for organising and interpreting distributed evidence about urban food ecosystems, making visible relationships, tensions and spatial patterns that may otherwise remain fragmented across different sources.