Situating Food: Planning and Design for New Urban Food Systems
November 8, 2013 - 2:00pm to November 9, 2013 - 8:00pmABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
OBJECTIVE

Situating Food: Planning and Design for New Urban Food Systems will identify models and foster innovation along with criticism of issues that impact food security, food justice, production, access and cultural awareness, especially as they influence trends in urban revitalization.

Champions of the local food movement have held it up as a potential economic boom to urban populations, a step toward the true reformation of the industrial food system and catalyst for neighborhood identity, social cohesion, and urban resilience or rebirth. Simultaneously, emerging critics have decried such efforts as a paternalistic attempt to 'save' central city populations as gentrification displaces current residents and property values increase. Divergent discourses on the subject make the topic of local food a socially, politically, economically, and ecologically charged topic in need of discussion and healthy, inclusive models.

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NYC - the garden

What if NYC grew all it's own food? A project by Terreform Research Group visualized just that question. These visualizations look at what the city would look like if it grew all it's own food. These questions of what urban agriculture would look like have been in the design consciousness for some time now. The argument still stands, and logistics are far from a reality, but really, can we do it, should we do it? The current model of urban and rural, suburban are not contributing to this issue.

Some questions: What are our current eating habits? How have they changed in the past 100 years? What could the next 100 years of eating habits look like? What is a gluten-free-paleo city?

What infrastructure of CSA's and community gardening efforts look like and what systems already feed into the city that could link up (ie, Amtrack, MTA, cargo ship?). Sexy images are fun to share and imagine...but that arugula sprout on 147th street?

How about a library of what can be grown, when it can be grown? Getting more specific with the food item and the diet and the climate...perhaps that could inform the new green city.
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Farmers to Urbanites

I have been following this mass population migration in China of rural farmers moving into cities and the governments initiative to make it happen. Here, another report seeking to have 60% of the population living in a city brings more than a number of questions and issues. Food, the people that grew it, the land, the cities and the food it needs. So many opportunities.

When I was living in Chongqing in 2001-2002 I traveled down the Yangze River just prior to the massive relocation. A number of villages were be completely relocated to make way for the raising waters of the Yangze dam. Traditional, ornate, sustainable villages were being uprooted to concrete, high rise cities that may have an updated infrastructure, but lacked a deep sense of place and tradition. One of those being local subsistence patterns and small scale farming.

Enter the creative solutions of people moving from rural to urban. Chickens in the bathroom to farming on the sidewalk...so many lessons to be learned and design opportunities for these new cities housing a population living between two worlds.

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The Food Access Research Atlas:

• Presents a spatial overview of food access indicators for low-income and other census tracts using different measures of supermarket accessibility;
• Provides food access data for populations within census tracts; and
• Offers census-tract-level data on food access that can be downloaded for community planning or research purposes.

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Atlanta's food deserts

The USDA scored every census tract in the country by location of grocery stores and income distribution. Metro Atlanta is no land of plenty. - 

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Parr is an architect by training, while Bompas' diploma is in geography. Six years ago, the two friends began experimenting with architectural models made of gelatin — first as a final university project, and then as a whimsical weekend hobby. They've built replicas of St. Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace and other famous buildings entirely out of Jell-O.

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The Cookie Architect

Rebecca Weld of Potsdam, N.Y., makes her living as an architect. But during her free time, she's hunched over the kitchen counter, like an alchemist, dripping food coloring drop by drop into icing to achieve the perfect color.

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