The United Nations Global Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly through Goal 2, simultaneously seeks to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. Therefore, it is crucial to focus on the agricultural production system and on consumption conditions. This means that ‘access’ to food should be determined with respect to the three dimensions of economic, physical and solidarity access to a quantity of food that fulfils both people’s nutritional needs and environmentally responsible consumption patterns. In Italy, 9.9% of the total population, i.e., six million people, live in a state of food insecurity. In Rome, 9.4% of the population lives in a condition of material deprivation, and applications for Citizens’ Income have increased, as well as food aids which amounted to EUR 20 million in 2020. The relationships between the cost of healthy and sustainable diets (which would cost 60% more than a staple diet) and the increasing economic difficulties people are facing, have prompted a focus on the multidimensional nature of food security, with particular emphasis on people’s ability to access food. In this paper, analyzing the Metropolitan City of Rome (Italy) as a case study, we present a pilot and innovative work on an affordability index to healthy and sustainable diet. A geospatial analysis highlights areas where economic difficulties in accessing food overlap with the shortage/absence of food retail outlets and with a lack of solidarity networks (e.g., civil society food distribution initiatives), allowing a new concept to come into focus, namely the blacked-out food areas. This concept helps to identify those areas in which people are socially excluded and cannot enjoy the same substantive food-related choices as people in other areas. The research outcomes provide insights into the geographical areas and neighborhoods characterized by critical access to healthy and sustainable food, providing crucial information for the planning and implementation of targeted social policies to tackle food insecurity.

Food insecurity is a pressing issue not only in low-income countries and rural areas, but also in affluent societies and major cities all around the world. Inequality related to access to food has, thus, become one of the main challenges to the social inclusion model based on social citizenship that is a characteristic feature of European societies. Starting from the multidimensional nature of food security, access to food is considered a necessary entitlement to make social citizenship effective, but this is not guaranteed in European societies. This contribution sets out to analyse the social inclusion/exclusion processes related to the status of food deprivation. This outcome is assessed in terms of social citizenship initiatives’ ability to stimulate a demand for institutional change, in a more inclusive direction. This aim is achieved through a comparative analysis of three different case studies of social citizenship initiatives, in three major cities of Southern Europe: Rome, Barcelona and Athens. Since food is not only a means of survival, but also holds multiple emotional, cultural and social meanings, this article shows – under what conditions – people, participating in social citizenship initiatives, can get social recognition and autonomy which can lead to reconnecting food and effective citizenship.

The 2030 Agenda is a framework that aims to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals that are faced with grand challenges. Local governments are strongly involved in the definition and implementation of sustainable development policies. This article investigates how the institutional dimension of the 2030 Agenda is localized by municipalities in the Metropolitan City of Florence, introducing the notion of administrative sustainability as a set of public administration capacities to implement sustainable policies. As a source of data, the study encompasses the content analysis of planning documents and semi-structured interviews with local policymakers. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of localizing the definition of institutional sustainability through practical implementation at the local level and emphasizes the need for adaptive, context-sensitive governance to address the wicked nature of sustainability issues, while a mismatch exists between institutional goals and actual administrative capacities. Points for practitioners: The 2030 Agenda strongly emphasizes the importance of localizing all Sustainable Development Goals to enable effective action. The institutional dimension is no exception, as both local politicians and public administrators play crucial roles in addressing sustainability challenges. Drawing on a local context, this research focuses on the localization of Sustainable Development Goals 16 and 17 and on administrative sustainability, defined as the ability of local governments to implement these goals. The study introduces the concept of administrative sustainability to evaluate the alignment between policy goals and the operational capacities and obstacles faced by local administrations.