The multi-functionality of food goes far beyond the many intangible benefits agriculture can bring to the countryside. Food also plays a multifunctional role in cities, Andrea Calori and Andrea Magarini write in Food and the Cities: Food Policies for Sustainable Cities. Food deserves to be classified as essential infrastructure, on par with main streets, police, water mains and parks. Food is a fundamental component of a city that is inseparable from citizens’ basic rights and needs, individual lifestyles and cultures, the socio-economic structure, and the city’s relationship with the surrounding environment. These trends go well beyond the need to feed cities, calling into question our perspectives on how to think about cities as a whole. The first part of the book examines the fundamental elements of agro-food cycles, that represent crucial factors of the urban metabolism and its social, economic, and environmental dimensions. The second part of the book, based on the analysis of one hundred experiences of food urban policies, provides an overview of how to enact a food policy in an urban area. It demonstrates their practical “do-ability” through specific interpretive keys as defined in EStà’s experience with the development of a food policy for the city of Milan. This part reviews the experiences of Almere, Amsterdam, Bristol, Gent, London, Malmö, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Toronto, San Francisco e Vancouver throughout ten issues (governance, education, waste, access, wellness, environment, agricultural ecosystem, production, business and finance, trade). The third part of the book outlines the commonalities across the cases studied that constitute the sum of accumulated knowledge and basic ingredients for the construction of urban food policies.