“ 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