“ How Food Shapes our Cities”Carolyn Steel

Borough MarketLondon, UKJan. 2, 2010

  

The question of how to feed cities may be one of the biggest contemporary questions, yet it's never asked: we take for granted that if we walk into a store or a restaurant, food will be there, magically coming from somewhere. Yet, think of it this way: just in London, every single day, 30 million meals must be provided. Without a reliable food supply, even the most modern city would collapse quickly. And most people today eat food of whose provenance they are unaware.

Architect and author Carolyn Steel uses food as a medium to "read" cities and understand how they work. In her book Hungry City she traces -- and puts into historical context -- food's journey from land to urban table and thence to sewer. Cities, like people, are what they eat."Hungry City is a smorgasbord of a book: dip into it and you will emerge with something fascinating."

Carolyn Steel: Food urbanist

Food is a shared necessity -- but also a shared way of thinking, argues Carolyn Steel. Looking at food networks offers an unusual and illuminating way to explore how cities evolved.

Vocabularyescalating: rising, going up

arable: farmable, cultivable

salinization: the process by which water-soluble salts accumulate in the s

oil

erosion: any of a group of natural processes, including weathering, dis

solution, abrasion, corrosion, and transportation, by which ma

terial is worn away from the earth's surface

wage: conduct, carry out

spree: wild activity

hinterland: backcountry; area away from city

moo: animal sound

bleat: sheep sound

emancipate: set free

blob: drop; spot

periphery: outskirts, outer edge

derivation: root; source

frontispiece: façade; beginning part of something

humus: organic fertilizer

What Is “Food Miles”?

An interesting concept related to carbon footprints is that of "food miles" -

the distance food travels from where it is grown to where it is ultimately

purchased or consumed by the end user. The more food miles that attach to a

given food, the less sustainable and the less environmentally desirable that food

is. The term food miles has become part of the vernacular among food system

professionals when describing the farm to consumer pathways of food.

How much of the food you will eat today will be locally produced?

And how much will travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles before it is delivered to your plate?

The vast distances that food travels 'from plough to plate' makes it

vulnerable to oil supply, inefficient on a per calorie basis, and unsustainable in

the long run. Combined with fair trade systems, many of these problems can be

overcome by developing regional and local food systems that highlight and use

local produce.

Food Miles

In the United States:

--81 cents of every food dollar go towards marketing and transportation of the

food, not back to the farmers themselves;

--the US is currently using about 5 times the fertilizer it did in 1960.

Utopia and Sitopia

“Utopia”: (by Thomas More)

derived from the Greek words “eutopia” (“good place”) and “outopia” (“no place”)

“Sitopia”: (by Carolyn Steel)

ancient Greek; “sitos” for food, and “topos” for place

Sir Thomas More1478-1535

Utopia (1516)

Utopia, Concerning the Best State of a Commonwealth

More derived 'Utopia' from the

Greek words Eutopia (“good pl

ace”) and Outopia (“no place”)

and in it has left us the model f

or hoped-for civilizations foreve

r after. As Oscar Wilde put it: “

A map of the world that does n

ot include Utopia is not worth e

ven glancing at, for it leaves ou

t the one country at which Hum

anity is always landing. And wh

en Humanity lands there, it look

s out, and seeing a better count

ry, sets sail. Progress is the rea

lization of Utopias.”

http://blog.pocketissue.com/2007/11/what-are-we-really-eating_21.htmlhttp://yesicare.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/the-world-on-a-dinner-plate-the-food-industry-today/http://www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/food-miles.html

References and illustrations