“ How Food Shapes our Cities” Carolyn Steel

1. Borough Market London, UK Jan. 2, 2010 “How Food Shapes our Cities” Carolyn Steel

2. 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. 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."

3. Vocabulary escalating: rising, going up arable: farmable, cultivable salinization: the process by which water-soluble salts accumulate in the soil erosion: any of a group of natural processes, including weathering, dissolution, abrasion, corrosion, and transportation, by which material 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

4. What Is “Food Miles”? 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? 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. 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.

5. Food Miles

6. 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.

7. 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

8. Sir Thomas More 1478-1535

9. Utopia (1516)

10. Utopia, Concerning the Best State of a Commonwealth More derived 'Utopia' from the Greek words Eutopia (“good place”) and Outopia (“no place”) and in it has left us the model for hoped-for civilizations forever after. As Oscar Wilde put it: “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.”

11. References and illustrations 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