Keywords

1 Introduction

The European Union, apart from its well-developed socio-economic regions, is also characterized by marginal, remote rural areas, where the difficult socio-economic conditions and gentrification are the basis of an increasing phenomenon of depopulation and territorial abandonment. In some of these areas, sometimes, not only the development of inland and/or mountainous areas is complex, but also coastal development is not easy, and calls for synergies between regional authorities, enterprises, universities, schools, and, more in general, local private and public stakeholders. In such vulnerable areas there is a greater necessity to build proper governance systems, where local communities and public and private stakeholders have the responsibility to meet, discuss and actively participate as public-private partnerships (PPP) in local development processes. However, unfortunately, all these different actors have different perspectives, priorities, languages, and, therefore, often it is not easy to synergize, especially in a delicate framework where wrong investment priorities of investment may result in further deterioration of already delicate socio-economic environments.

The rural development programmes that have been implemented in Europe since the 1990s have consolidated the vision of local-territorial development promoted through participatory and bottom-up processes, by drawing up development policies that are calibrated to the actual needs and characteristics of the territories. This change has led to the abandonment of the traditional top-down approach to move towards development processes which involve more stakeholders in the planning stages. This implies the decentralization of decisional power through participatory activities that make it possible to define development strategies which take into account a wide variety of perspectives. In this context, the Leader programme, in the form of a Community Initiative in the first three programming cycles, has taken on over time the characteristics of an Approach, in the logic of mainstreaming. This transition was aimed to strengthen and consolidate the typical peculiarities of the participation and the capacity to plan bottom-up strategies for the development of the territory. Within the Leader programme, Local Action Groups (LAGs) represent the “territorial governance of rural development” (Tola 2010), which give concrete form to local development policies by planning and subsequently implementing Local Action Plans (LAPs). LAGs play a key role in organizing and carrying out joint activities between the members of the Socio-economic Partnerships (PSE), the promoters of the LAPs, in order to identify the strategic priorities to be pursued for the development of the areas concerned. Since the previous Eu programming periods in coastal areas, the European Union has introduced the Fishery Local Action Groups (FLAGs), as governance systems involving a greater plurality of local actors for the realization of local development plans based on the valorization and diversification of the activities around the fisheries (Marcianò & Romeo2016). This type of endogenous development empowered local rural and fisheries communities promoting tourism and diversification activities in rural and coastal European areas, thus increasing complexity according to the principle of relatedness (Hidalgo et al. 2018).

It is still uncertain which role universities can play in this changing environment which is moving strongly towards a bottom-up development approach that tries to overcome the boundaries of top-down approaches, combining the strengths of private and public actors. As has been recently highlighted by Trencher et al. (2013, 2014, 2017), there is a growing debate about the new mission of the academic world to achieve what is called “sustainability co-creation” between universities and society in a place-based perspective. Partnerships and collaboration “between academia, industry, government and civil society are now seen as a prerequisite for the knowledge flow and knowledge exchange” (Trencher et al.). This depicts a role where the university “collaborates with various social actors to create societal transformations into the goal of materializing sustainable development in a specific location, region or societal sub-sector” (Trencher et al. 2014). In this context the university, through Action Research, is called on to craft useful knowledge and bind it to societal action. Moving in this new paradigm of “sustainability co-creation, greater emphasis is given to knowledge production as a vehicle for creating solutions to societal problems and triggering societal transformations towards greater sustainability” (Trencher et al. 2014). Since in this situation knowledge is a key resource, the role of the university becomes fundamental to foster the creation of networks between research, local government and stakeholders in a bottom-up perspective through collaborative research (Rinaldi & Cavicchi 2016; Marcianò & Romeo 2019).

In such a context this paper highlights some of the themes of research carried out in an Heritage Plus Research Project on Gastronomy and Tourism in remote European Areas, with particular reference to the creation of a gastronomic Atlas of the Italian area of study, the Metropolitan Town of Reggio Calabria.

2 Gastronomy and Tourism in Remote European Areas: A Case Study

In a recent European Research Project on Gastronomy and Tourism in Remote European Areas (the Gastrocert project), a Consortium between four universities was formed including two universities that had already worked together in a previous cooperation project between Lags: the UK West Highlands College and the Mediterranean university of Reggio Calabria, and two academic partners coming from Sweden, and Spain, the University of Girona and the University of Mid Sweden.

The general objectives of Gastrocert were to “explore (i) how the development of local gastronomy can help to protect rural heritage values; and (ii) how entrepreneurial culture can enhance locally produced food as a value-added touristic experience. The objectives included understanding the important role that food plays in cultural identities and the promotion of local and regional traditions. The project also emphasized the significance of local knowledge, skills and practices regarding heritage assets and how experiential journeys through cultural landscapes promote gastronomic tourism”. The Gastrocert project focused on three remote areas of Scotland, Sweden and Italy, while in Spain the area of study is situated in the highly developed Catalonian region.

The focus of the Italian Unit was the Province of Reggio Calabria. The research approach was oriented toward building a common vision for the whole Province of Reggio Calabria, an area that was recently included among the Italian Metropolitan Towns. The Province of Reggio Calabria has a rich cultural heritage and typical agro-food products that are closely linked to the territory, its history, and its culture. The research project, formulated within the Agricultural Department of the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, provided a review of the experience of the local authorities, aimed at enhancing the cultural and gastronomic heritage of the territory, in the Province of Reggio Calabria where it is possible to distinguish the following homogeneous areas (see Fig. 1): the Strait area, the Costa Viola, the Gioia Tauro Plain, the Ionian side, and the Grecanica area. The historical, ecological-environmental, socio-economic assessment of the territory of the Province of Reggio Calabria was the basis for the definition of local development strategies for this area and the redefinition of food and wine routes/itineraries aimed at enhancing local resources and traditions and promoting the territory.

Fig. 1.
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Area of study

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Several research activities have been conducted on the coastal and rural local governance systems and integrated development plans are being experimented within the current EU programming period in the study area. Particularly, in the western side of the study area, the main integrated planning activities have been oriented towards the definition of the medium-term strategies of the two main governance systems already active in the area, the LAG Batir and the Stretto Coast FLAG. In the past few years, research planning activities have been conducted in both the rural areas (Calabrò et al. 2005; Marcianò & Palladino 2013; Cozzupoli et al. 2013; Musolino et al. 2018, 2020) and in the coastal area (Marcianò & Romeo 2016, Di Staso et al. 2020). In the rural area, the results of a cooperation project between some European LAGS (the Landsare project) were useful for the definition of a new local development strategy for the area. In the western coastal area of the Province of Reggio Calabria, research was conducted on economic and relational aspects of the fisheries communities (Romeo et al. 2016; Palladino et al. 2016). During the Gastrocert project new research was conducted in order to widen the diversification perspectives of fisheries communities (Palladino et al. 2019a) and their social networks (Palladino et al. 2019b) in order to find the main weaknesses of such communities and define a new integrated development plan for the period 2014–2020.

Another area under investigation is the Ionian side, also known as the “Locride area”, a very a marginal area in Calabria where no previous research has been done in support of the development of local governance systems, at least from the Agricultural Department of the Mediterranean University. Instead, it occurred that, in the previous EU programming period, the implementation of the development plan carried out by the local LAG was beset by administrative problems, and the LAG was dismissed. Therefore, in the new EU programming period 2014–2020, it was very important to make a joint effort to start a new process of integrated development in the area, in order to support the creation of a new local governance system that could define an overall development strategy for the whole Ionic area. This process required a prolonged effort, also supported by the Gastrocert project, which ended in a new local development plan for the area that is currently being implemented (Marcianò & Romeo 2019).

Research activities have also been conducted to highlight the motivations behind the consumption of local food by means of different exploratory surveys carried out at the local and international level. The analysis of the consumers’ point of view is important in order to see if the local agro-food products meet the requirements of the potential consumers. The research was based on a methodology for mapping consumer preferences for local products which was tested for a meat product (Nicolosi et al. 2016d). The methodology is based the Multiple Correspondences Analysis (MCA) method, and it helps to identify the motivations underlying the consumption of local food. Other applications of the methodology have been undertaken in order to analyse the consumer point of view on fresh local fish and stockfish in different Southern Italian regions (Nicolosi et al. 2016a, 2016c). Two other applications of the methodology concerned transnational comparisons between Italian and Spanish consumers (Nicolosi et al. 2019a) and Italian and Swedish consumers (Nicolosi et al. 2019b).

In addition, several in-depth case studies were conducted at the territorial, enterprise or product level. In this way, the phenomenon of tourism combined with food and wine products has been deepened and contextualized in the wider context of local development and cultural and environmental heritage. In particular, Ascioti et al. (2019) provide an Ecosystem services evaluation that presents an Economic value assessment of forest carbon sequestration and atmospheric temperature mitigation in the area of study. In another study, Nicolosi et al. (2016b, 2016e) focus on coastal villages, traditional viticulture and gastronomic tourism, investigating the dynamics of the terraced heroic viticulture and fishing companies of the Costa Viola. Di Gregorio et al. (2019) focus on the possibility for the territories in Aspromonte to exploit their religious heritage for tourism. There a pilgrimage route has become interesting from an environmental and naturalistic point of view. In another study, Bianco and Marcianò (2019) a use quali-quantitative methodology in order to build participatory ecotourism development strategies in a Nature Reserve in Calabria.

3 Towards a Food and Wine Atlas of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria

The goal of one of the activities of the Gastrocert project consists of the construction of a database of local products in the Province of Reggio Calabria, whose area corresponds to the Metropolitan City, and the identification of suitable tools for their enhancement. The first phase of this study focused on the “recognition” of the main historical-artistic, environmental, landscape, cultural and tourist resources of the territories of the province of Reggio Calabria. A database has been created to support territorial marketing actions; this database is structured on two levels:

  • A collection of databases relating to the environmental, landscape, ethnological, cultural, demographic and socio-economic components;

  • A systematic collection of databases on the particular topic on which the territorial marketing action, the provincial gastronomic heritage, is concentrated.

An important research activity was the classification and mapping of all the gastronomic products existing in the study area. Each gastronomic product was assigned to a category and the production municipalities were identified. For the theme of gastronomy it is important to consider the services useful for its promotion, the dedicated events, the itineraries, and the presence of related narratives.

In the second phase of the study, we focused on the analysis of the most suitable tools for a territorial marketing action with gastronomy as the starting point, identifying an App for the web with a strong interaction with social channels, a most suitable way to disseminate the values of the territory by offering visibility to the gastronomic heritage that is waiting to be enhanced in the context of the original agro-forestry activities.

The methodological reflection was followed by a phase of application experimentation, during which the Gastronomic Atlas of the province of Reggio Calabria was started. This Atlas aims to fully illustrate the topic of gastronomy relative to the area of the Province of Reggio Calabria and represents a collection of information and materials all presented in map form.

3.1 The Data Collection

The first phase of the study-research focused on the “recognition” of the main historical-artistic, environmental, landscape, cultural and tourist resources of the territories of the Province of Reggio Calabria. The first step was to develop some tools that would allow the recovered data to be collected and returned quickly and be easily accessible. We have chosen to use the geodatabase Access, organized, for each LAG, for the 98 Municipalities of the province and for various types of tourism resources and services.

A possible database supporting territorial marketing actions should, first, consist of at least two levels:

  • a basic level, to synthetically collect databases on the environmental, landscape, ethnological, cultural, demographic and socio-economic components;

  • a peak level, to systematically accommodate the databases on the particular topic on which the territorial marketing action is concentrated (in this specific case, the provincial gastronomic heritage).

Clearly these two levels are closely related, and indeed the second is almost a logical consequence of the first, based on the opportunities that can be highlighted through the information collected and presented through the basic level, since:

  • the characteristics of the environment, the fruitful possibilities already there, and place, the local peculiarities can generate the identification of homogeneous territorial basins in which additional opportunities can be framed (and add value), as proposed through the peak level database; and

  • the recipient who is interested in mountain excursions, and bird watching, rather than the beaches of the coastal resorts, will first of all want to have information on the topics of interest and collateral attractions (presence of parks or Natura 2000 areas, historical sites, and accessibility) that constitute the points of reference of the local environment and in some way also the basic information set of a field with strong environmental value.

Alongside the basic information set, the top level is where special opportunities are offered, linked to the environmental context and capable of enhancing it. These include the gastronomic productions already included in tourist itineraries or local activities such as sustainable tourism, aimed at enhancing the environmental and cultural value of the Province, and which will therefore generate income.

3.2 The Territorial Resources

As far as resources are concerned, this work has been able to take advantage of the extraordinary knowledge heritage implemented by the LAG Batir as part of the “Atlas of the Lower Tyrrhenian Reggino Landscape” project; it is a cognitive framework aimed at the identification, description, interpretation, and representation of the many and different landscapes present in the area of the Lower Tyrrhenian area of the Province of Reggio Calabria (Albanese G. 2001; Barreca et al. 2014; Cozzupoli F. & Vita F.C 2014, 2015; Di Fazio S. & Fichera C.R 2001; Gulisano G 2008a, Gulisano G 2008b, 2009; Marcianò C 2013; Marziliano et al. 2016, Careri et al. 2021).

The Gastrocert geodatabase borrows the structure prepared for resource data from the Landscape Atlas, with some insertions and small changes necessary in consideration of the differences existing between the territories investigated and the different purposes for which these two products were implemented.

Following the scheme already defined by the project “Atlas of the Lower Tyrrhenian Landscape”, the resources are classified using a hierarchical scheme, which produces a typical tree structure, of a recursive or nested type, where the clusters of the highest levels are aggregations of clusters of the lowest levels of the tree. At the highest level, resources are divided into two specific areas: natural heritage and cultural heritage. Each of these areas is then broken down into categories and each category is, in turn, divided into types.

In addition to the specific elements, the framework of resources is completed by the Protected Areas and the areas for the protection of biodiversity (the Natura 2000 Network). These resources are treated separately for purely geographical consideration, being defined by well-defined polygons, even if, in the case of some Sites of Community Importance, the dimensions are so small they could be safely considered to be point elements. The classification system used for resources is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Classification of natural and cultural heritage
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With regard to the descriptive sheets of the individual assets, in this case the scheme prepared by the Landscape Atlas was also used. The following information is associated with each asset:

Designation – Type – Category – Municipality – Address – Properties - Current destination – History - Short description - Valuable movable and immovable property - Open to the public – Accessibility - Tourist relevance - Level of perception - Conservation status – Sitography – Bibliography.

3.3 The Gastronomic Resources

In addition to information on landscape heritage, the Gastrocert database contains specific data sets relating to gastronomic heritage.

Traditional Food Products. One of the main research activities was the classification and geo-location of the entire list of officially registered Traditional Food Products (TFPs, or Prodotti Agro-alimentari Tradizionali, PAT, in Italian). (Cafiero et al. 2019).

The 2019 revision of the list of TFPs (Mipaaft 2019), included 268 products for Calabria. The production area of each product ranged from just one or a few municipalities to the entire region. Careful review of the information available from various sourcesFootnote 1 allowed Cafiero et al. (2019) to reconstruct the list of municipalities (“comuni”) where each of the products is traditionally obtained, allowing for a geo-localization of all Calabrian TFPs. What emerged is a picture of a region with a very rich heritage of traditional foods, the result of encounters between centuries of traditions and cultures from the Mediterranean basin, Northern Europe, and the near East. The various peoples who have inhabited Calabria over the millennia have clearly also left their heritage embedded in the culinary traditions of the region.

The focus on the products of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria, excluding those that are typical of other provinces, led to reducing the initial number of products from 268 to 195. Further, only 89 of those 195 products are found in the restricted area covered by the Atlas. Finally, the exclusion of those products that are produced in the entire Metropolitan City area, led to a final list of 66 highly specific products. These products were grouped into eight categories of: (A) meats and offal; (B) fish; (C) breads pastries and sweets; (D) fruits and vegetables; (E) cheeses; and (F) prepared dishes, (G) oils and fats, and (H) non-alcoholic beverages, distilled drinks and liquors, as defined by Mipaaft (1999) (Table. 2).

Table 2. The main gastronomic products of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria
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A synthesis of the classification and geo-spatial information is contained in Fig. 2, which overlaps the geographical map which shows the five macro areas that comprise the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria (Piana di Gioia Tauro, Costa Viola, Area dello Stretto, Grecanica, and Locride), together with a “network” of the municipality/product pairs. The size of the products’ nodes in the represented network is based on their degree: the larger the size of the product node, the more municipalities are involved in the production of that particular product.

Fig. 2.
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Combined map of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria and the network of traditional food products (adapted from Fig. 1 in Cafiero et al.2019)

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A very relevant aspect that characterizes the food heritage of what is now the Metropolitan Area of Reggio Calabria is the high degree of “typicality”. Despite the strict criteria for the selection of specific products, only 9 of the 97 municipalities did not host at least one of the highly specific products. As a result, the map of specific products by municipality is a very dense one, with only nine isolated nodes, all belonging to the Strait Area and the Piana di Gioia Tauro, arguably the less rural among of five areas. A more detailed description of the database relating to the gastronomic productions of the area is available in Cafiero et al. 2019.

Wine and Gastronomy Itineraries and Other Resources. With respect to the theme of gastronomy, in addition to the products, it seemed useful to consider the services useful for their promotion, the dedicated events, the itineraries, and the presence of related narratives.

The choice to insert these elements in the database arises not only from the consideration that these are important aspects of the culture of the territory, but also from the belief that increasingly, together with the catering, they affect the choices involved in visiting and using a territory, such as those elements capable of involving the visitor through experiences and emotions.

The inclusion in the database of the accommodation available in the Province seemed useful in order to complete the picture of the potential of the target territories. This was also done with a view to enhancing the rural heritage and diversifying the agricultural economy through the development of sustainable tourism activities, in line with the environmental and economic profile, consistent with the rural identity of the territory. Finally, the food and wine itineraries have been included in the database as tools capable of networking the various resources of a territory, resulting, according to the target audience, in multiple thematic itineraries.

The itineraries, selected by eliminating those that are too general, without any indication of the planned stages or that, with just different names, retraced the same routes, were divided by their distribution in the different municipalities, means of transport used (bike, car, foot, mixed), typology (historical-artistic and cultural, religious, food and wine, nature, cycling and sporting itineraries), and web presence.

Finally, the local legends and folk tales have been collected in a table with an indication of:

  • their locality and municipality;

  • a short description;

  • an essential bibliography and sitography;

  • For the other resources - events, typical products, hospitality and catering - the general filing was deemed sufficient.

3.4 Creation of a Web App Dedicated to Gastronomic Products

Territorial marketing stands for the set of cardinal tools for the promotion of the territorial space and its landscape heritage in particular. Therefore, one of the fundamental components of territorial marketing concerns communication: not only in an external (promotional) sense to attract new resources, but also in the internal sense, since the action of territorial marketing, in order to be effective over the long term, must be based on the consent of all the actors involved and on the transparency of all the interests at stake (Bloise et al. 2017). It thus becomes necessary to identify the best communication strategy, so that the territory and its gastronomic tradition are considered as a product that can be promoted and advertised adequately, by adapting the language and tools according to the intended recipient.

It is precisely from these assumptions that the idea was born to set up a web App dedicated to the gastronomic heritage, integrated with the whole complex of environmental, cultural and landscape values. It represents an attractive way to spread the values of the territory and to increase the visibility of a gastronomic heritage that is waiting to be exploited together with the original agro-forestry activities. This combination put the individual gastronomic products in their regional context, thus giving for the web browser the opportunity to appreciate not only the characteristics of each individual product, but also the overall quality of the area where these products are made.

The Gastronomic Atlas of the Province of Reggio Calabria aims, on the one hand, to fully illustrate the topic of gastronomy relating to the area of the Province of Reggio Calabria; and, on the other, it represents a collection of information and materials combined in maps.

The Atlas was implemented using the ArcGIS Online platform, based on Esri's Cloud infrastructure, which enables the management of geographic information, such as maps, data and geospatial applications made available by Esri, the Esri user community, and GIS users all over the world. ArcGIS Online can be defined as the social network of geographic information. Using the ArcGIS Online tools, it is possible to create Web Map Applications, that is, simple web applications for consulting geographic data, also integrated with base maps or the maps of other users. Among the different application models made available by ArcGIS Online, the ones that appear most interesting for the construction of the Atlas were the story maps. The story maps allow you to tell stories that inform, involve and inspire the public, combining web maps with narrative texts, photos, and other multimedia elements.

The Gastronomic Atlas of the Province of Reggio Calabria uses the Story Map Series model, which allows a series of maps to be presented via cards. In addition to maps, images, videos and web content can also be included to make the App more engaging; other apps can also be used among the web contents, creating a Chinese box system. The App has six sections, one main, which describes the area as a whole, and five dedicated to the gastronomic productions of the three LAGs, the FLAG, and the Strait Area.

For the main sheet, intended for the description of the territory as a whole, a Cascade story map is used. The Cascade app model allows, through a full-screen scrolling, to combine narrative text with maps, images and multimedia content in an extremely immersive experience. In a Cascade story, sections containing texts and multimedia content can be interspersed with ‘immersive’ sections that fill the screen with maps or 3D scenes.

The story map describes the territory in four sections:

  1. 1.

    Territory;

  2. 2.

    Environment

  3. 3.

    Culture

  4. 4.

    Traditions

After this overall presentation of the provincial territory, the subsequent cards are each dedicated to a study area for which the gastronomic products present are described.

The study areas considered are:

  • LAG Batir;

  • LAG Grecanica;

  • LAG Terre Locridee;

  • FLAG dello Stretto;

  • Strait of Messina area.

Each of these tabs allows the user to view a Journal story map that describes the gastronomic products related to that territory. The Journal app template is ideal when the user wants to combine descriptive text with maps and other embedded content. The initial index contains the sections that users can scroll through. The sections correspond to the categories used for the division of gastronomic products.

Fig. 3.
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Browsing the section relating to the products of the LAG Batir, those relating to the category “Fresh pastas and products from the bakery, biscuits, pastry and confectionery” are listed.

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Obviously, the complete list of Categories is not always found in a form relating to a specific territory; this is explained by the absence of products related to that Category in that particular territory.

Each section contains, in the left panel, the list of gastronomic products relating to that specific category in relation to the territorial portion of the form. In the right part a Gallery of maps is displayed; for each product the relevant map will be presented; the Map Gallery displays a preview of the map; clicking on it displays the map with the associated territory of the product considered, in addition to the other territorial attractors (environmental, historical-cultural heritage, etc.).

The App has six sections, five of which are dedicated to the gastronomic productions of the 3 LAGs, the FLAG and the Strait Area.

Fig. 4.
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The maps of the individual products show the production area and the other landscape resources present

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4 Conclusions

One of the priority objectives in the development programme of the European Union concerns rural heritage, which represents one of the most complex and heterogeneous aspects in the context of European societies. The opportunity offered by the Gastrocert project is part of a new interpretation of the territory, seen as a whole, involving: tangible and intangible resources, public and private “actors”, actions aimed at promoting and communicating the territory, especially with a view to tourist enhancement. In this context, through a Research-Action approach, universities can undertake stimulating creative diversification paths to be contextualized within local development processes. All this is necessary to reduce the gap existing between the different types of actors involved in the regional, sub-regional, business, or municipal development processes. In fact, there is a need to build a common language between the different actors and to reduce the gap between “thinkers and operators”, academics and entrepreneurs, sometimes engaged at different levels, who are not communicating effectively with each other. The cause of this gap can be found, on the one hand, in the lack of relationships, or in the inability to build adequate networks between academia and professionals, and, on the other, in communication problems caused by an overly technical approach and a one-way academic language (Santini et al. 2017; Marcianò & Romeo 2019, p. 35). Active participation can facilitate mutual knowledge between the various stakeholders in order to build adequate and effective synergies in the development processes, in both the planning and implementation phases. In this context, there is a strong need for academics to test themselves in different contexts to co-create sustainable development solutions, that is, dynamic, creative and collaborative strategies that can be adopted at the level of local communities that strive to develop diversification activities related to their principal activities in this time of great economic and environmental challenges.

The starting point of the Gastrocert research project was found in the various integrated local development experiences carried out in the province of Reggio Calabria by the local action groups (LAGs), the local fisheries action groups (FLAGs) and the agri-food quality district (DAQ) (Marcianò et al. 2014), who joined the project as associated partners. Various synergies have been activated with the associated partners, in the territorial analysis, territorial animation and/or concertation activities, phases that constitute the main activities in the integrated development planning processes. In this context, it was possible to pursue, together with these public-private local action groups, a common path of action-research, which led to the definition of development strategies that will be implemented in the various territories in the coming years.

Among the various studies cited, one project activity concerned the establishment of the Food and Wine Atlas presented in this study which should be further developed by extending it to the company level. The tool could be used at a spatial planning level, for example, to provide a map of the Province of Reggio Calabria which highlights the areas where multiple attractors overlap, starting from the gastronomic products themselves, and also take into account the other “tourist, environmental, archaeological-historical-cultural, religious” attractions. Further research and development activities are needed to develop this tool and link it to the implementation phase of the local development plans carried out by the Local Action Groups (LAGs), Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAGs) and Food Districts of the Metropolitan Area of Reggio Calabria.