Bologna’s Future Table: Tourism, Food Innovation, and a City Reshaped

Source: From Sue' travels

In this second installment of her summer travel series, host Sue explores Bologna, Italy, through the lens of change: what’s been lost, what’s evolving, and what’s quietly coming back to life.

From canals hidden in plain sight to climate-smart wines and Bologna's startup-driven food innovation, this episode is a personal yet critical look at how a historically rich city navigates the friction between preservation and progress. You'll hear: why tourism in Bologna feels both helpful and heartbreaking, how traditional Italian cuisine is being reimagined—and sometimes resisted, how ancient canals are being restored to protect the city from climate risks, and what a difference a decade makes in the wine list. This is a short, thoughtful journey through a city at a crossroads—one where history and the future are having lunch at the same table.

Selected Links:

• “My Beloved Italian City Has Turned Into Tourist Hell. Must We Really Travel Like This?” New York Times Op-Ed, by Ilaria Maria Sala, August 9, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/opinion/italy-tourists-bologna-mortadella.html

• Future Food Institute. https://futurefoodinstitute.org/ 

• Diving Into Underground Bologna. Kairos Magazine, Rutgers University. January 10, 2024. https://kairosmagazine.rutgers.edu/diving-into-underground-bologna/ 

• “This Sparkling Wine Is Having a Surprising Comeback—so I Went to Italy to See How It's Made” Travel + Leisure Magazine, May 16, 2025. https://www.travelandleisure.com/lambrusco-italy-sparkling-wine-11725042 

Episode Transcript:

Sue (00:00)

Hi everyone, it's Sue here. Welcome to another episode of Signal Shift. And if you've been following, we're doing a lighthearted series this month on signals hunting and specifically for me on what it looks like to find signals when you're traveling. So last week we started in Seoul, South Korea, and this week we're headed over to Europe to Bologna, Italy specifically. ⁓ And

You know, like last time, it's been really fun for me to see some of these signals in Bologna. It's a city I also happened to visit multiple times over the last two decades. has been really, really interesting. And especially the juxtaposition of kind of centuries old traditions in Italy and in Bologna specifically, and looking towards the future, you could see some of the tension that was a little bit palpable there.

So yeah, so with that, I wanted to share a couple signals that, you know, were more eye-opening and then again, maybe two more uplifting or fun signals. So yeah, to start, this goes right back into tourism. And I guess one of the more surprising things for me was that, you know, I expected some of the tourism issues that we found in places like Barcelona or Venice in major cities.

Bologna hasn't been too much on the map in the past. And I guess I wasn't expecting to see a lot of it there, but I did. And I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised about it, but I did find just so many more people And with that, just the types of stores have changed, the prices have changed. And I know back in the day, the New York Times had featured Bologna on its 36-hour features.

And I remember even then thinking, gosh, this is going to change how Bologna is. And it's true. With more tourism there, it has changed. So in some ways, I found the change as positive as a traveler. For example, it was a lot easier to make reservations for restaurants while I was home before I went there. But also, I found it a bit sad because of that, you didn't have to have a conversation with someone at the restaurant to make a reservation.

Also, the days of like three to four hour dinners, just soaking it all in, gone, you know, just amiable banter with the people that were working there, gone. You you did feel in some places just like rushed to get out of there so that they could see the next people. They found that a little bit sad because I remember the city so fondly with these more like lazy dinners, just getting to talk, things like that.

Not unrelated to that. The next thing I was more conflicted about maybe was the food scene. So there's this op-ed in the New York Times from last summer of a local journalist bemoaning how Bologna has changed into a tourist trap and whether it's actually possible that they can live like this. All these local traditional stores have closed down for these modern chains that have been selling mortadella.

And, you know, don't know, tortellini, you know, very traditional dishes that Bologna is known for. And each place we went to was, it was just packed with tourists, you know, getting their fill of Bologna ham or pasta al ragu, whatever it's going to be. But what I found interesting was before we went there, I found that there is the Future Food Institute based in Bologna, in the middle of the University of Bologna, really housing

food startups thinking about innovation. And there's a great video on their website that talks about how Italy has helped export their traditions to the world. But in order to continue to do so, they really need to innovate. And how are they going to do that? So it was really cool to see things like, you know, just designing different ways to make latte art, for example, on lattes or their cappuccinos. And also things like having gluten sensors for places to really detect the amount of gluten in different foods for consumers. So I thought that was really interesting. Unfortunately, they didn't have any events while we were there, so I couldn't go.

The next best thing I found was the Green Michelin Guide had one restaurant listed in Bologna called Ahime. And they really took a turn on really finding local seasonal ingredients, having organic natural wines on the menu and so we were able to get a reservation there. I love, think it was Conde Nast Traveler that reviewed them and said that they had like sort of this punk approach to traditionalists. And what they said was like, they pushed the buttons of unimaginative tourists. So I thought it was really interesting. I also didn't consider myself a huge traditionalist until I went there. And I definitely felt like I was maybe being pushed a little bit too far. There was really, not much recognizable in the way you would maybe stereotypically think of dishes from really made me a little bit uncomfortable to think about a future where are they saying that pasta al ragu isn't on the menu because of climate or whatever the reason. So yeah, I just thought it was really pushing me to think about what food... might look like in Bologna in the future.

There's definitely more restaurants they mentioned that were starting to innovate around the edges. And certainly I wondered, what is the transition for diners to be comfortable with where the future is taking them in terms of their meals? So I definitely felt after leaving there, I needed some middle ground. And so I would be really interested in taking a food tour that juxtaposes kind of your very, very traditional foods with what you might consider meals of the future, what that might look like. So Bologna, if you have a tour like that, let me know. I would love to attend it next time.

Okay, so now for some more uplifting or just kind of fun imaginative things. So one signal I saw was what we have said multiple times, which is what's old is new again, and how can it benefit the city? So this was a really cool bringing back of history. know, the first time I was in Bologna, I was in the outskirts of the old city where I happened upon an old canal between houses it was super quiet. There was a lot of greenery. It was just very lush and quiet. It almost felt like a secret. And it turned out this is a vestige of a system of canals, not unlike Venice that the Romans built a long time ago, to bring hydraulic power to the city, also use it as a transport system for textile or for goods and for people, also as a way to build industry, like textiles and paper.

But when we found it, of course, centuries later, it just felt beautiful, like an old relic of the city. Well, that secret really isn't a secret anymore. is because of social media, people have been photographing this portal that can really look in between some of the houses for these canals. And so it's a popular tourist trap. But it's a cool picture and whatnot.

But what's cooler is the effort by the city to really revive the system of canals, to refurbish it, both for its hydraulic power, also for benefits to the city to combat climate effects, and hopefully also increase and improve urban lifestyle by lighting up some of the canals, building a bike path around it, things like that. So, you know, I can imagine a future where enough of the waterways have been revived. So, you know, it brings more wellbeing, more resiliency to the city. In fact, I think one of the articles covered that the canals are the reasons why Bologna was okay after some of the flooding last year by the rains. So very interesting. Yeah, so I don't know, maybe in the next 10 years when I go visit, there'll be just a bigger bike system, there'll be more walk paths around some of the canals. It won't be such a secret anymore. Yeah, very interesting to see.

And then lastly, another really fun discovery was just the difference in the wine lists compared to over a decade ago. I remember Prosecco reigning supreme on some of the sparkling categories. And of course the bottles were costing less than 10 euros. But now I noticed a lot of what's called Pignoletto, DOC. It's actually a locally made wine in the Emilia Romagna region and it received its DOC label in 2014, which is probably why I'm seeing a lot more of it, even though the grape variety has existed for a long, time. So it's interesting to see the future changes in 10 years, right? Another big change on many of the menus was the inclusion of organic and orange wines or natural wines. course, this is something we've seen a lot more at home as well. And I guess this section, I would think, is just gonna get bigger and bigger as people are focused on more regenerative, viticulture and ways to be resilient against climate change. then finally, we tried Lambrusco, which, you know, doesn't have the best reputation, but people there are really trying to change that. And I will say that we were very pleasantly surprised with the different types of Lambrusco that we tried. It's not kind of the idea of being this like overly sweet wine. The ones we tried were cool, dry and crisp.

Yeah, a lot of the local winemakers are starting to revive it, which I thought was really cool. And so it makes me wonder again, in 10 years, is there some other kind of wine that has been on the outskirts that we will see more of in the future? Who knows that it's especially resilient to climate change? I don't know. So yeah, I'd be curious to hear what the Future Food Institute folks think about what's happening in their city with the changes in these menus and what might be to come.

Yeah, there you have it. Just a short and sweet episode on some of the changes that we've seen in Bologna, ways we might imagine the city in the future, maybe more walkways and canals. Who knows? Maybe it'll also be, maybe there'll be some reckoning around tourism in the city and what might change as a result of that. So we hope, you know, unlike what we've seen in some other major cities already, they'll be able to resolve this one peacefully, but we'll see in the future. So anyway.

That's Bologna in a nutshell, and I'll see you next week for the third installment of this travel series. So thank you so much for listening and watching, and I'll see you on the next one.