Food and Urbanism

Food and Urbanism: The Convivial City and a Sustainable Future

Susan Parham

Cities are now home to over fifty per cent of the world's population, but the contribution of food to shaping cities is often overlooked. Food matters in designing and planning cities because how it is grown, transported, bought, cooked, eaten, cleaned up and disposed of has significant effects on creating a sustainable, resilient and convivial urban future.  The book explores methods for extending the gastronomic possibilities of urban space - from the scale of the table to the metropolis. Using a wealth of examples from cities worldwide, the book explores how physical design and socio-spatial arrangements focused on food can help maintain socially rich, productive and sustainable urban space. Underpinning the book's analysis of food and cities is the view that decisions about a hyper-urban future should recognise the fundamental role of food. Food and Urbanism provides an original and new contribution to food scholarship; exploring some intriguing research questions about the ways that food, urbanism and sustainable conviviality interconnect.

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camp kitchen

"With local government now actively acknowledging the existence of this slum thanks to the kitchen project, and the new water tap part of the government budget for public facilities, a new and unconventional process has started in Terras da Costa. There are now requests for new facilities— a playground, a library—which have to be managed democratically.

There will be plenty of work ahead, and following through with it is what makes the Terras da Costa kitchen an unusually inclusive architectural project. “We wanted to break down the walls of invisibility here,” Saraiva says. “Now, there is a lot to do.”
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Landscape as Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Food Security

Titled ‘Landscape as Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Food Security: Perspectives from Switzerland and Qatar’, the day-long event will feature a series of lectures and a workshop on green roofs. 

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interaction between producers and consumers

The Future Food District is in the centre of the Expo Milano 2015 site, in a 6500 sqm area between the Cardo and the Decumanus. Designed by Carlo Ratti Associati, the pavilion is the product of a partnership between Coop and MIT Senseable City Lab, and aims to answer questions such as: “How will we do our shopping? What will we eat? Who will handle food and food products before they get to consumers’ tables in the future?”.

Carlo Ratti Associati offer an experiment, a new retail layout with greater interaction between producers and consumers, a reference to the old-fashioned market. In the“supermarket” area the layout of the goods is organised on the basis of five routes representing five production processes, and “augmented or intelligent labels” designed by the architects provide consumers with complete information on the produce or food purchased. The Exhibition Area will be a multipurpose facility projecting visitors into the future, for example with prototypes of sea farms.

Carlo Ratti Associati is the focus of an exhibition to be held by SpazioFMGperl'Architettura during the 2015 Salone del Mobile in Milan, due to open on Monday, April 13 2015.

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Package Free Supermarkets

One response to these changes is the package-free supermarket, an idea being rebooted around the world, primarily in hipster bastions like Portland, Berlin, Austin and Amsterdam. For years, health-food stores and bulk-food retailers like Bin Inn have catered to a small-but-dedicated consumer base. New players like Original Unverpackt in Berlin and in.gredients in Austin, Texas are bringing a design approach to the industry.

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