How to feed a city - and change the world
Carolyn Steel
In this talk, Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City and Sitopia, reflects on what it takes to feed a city, how food has shaped cities and how the size of cities been contrained until recent times by the ability to feed them. She traces the development of cities from the earliest times, through to the largest city in the ancient world, Rome, to the present day and their relationship to food. From the thinking of Johann von Thünen through the development of London, Carolyn explores the dynamics of feeding a city from the pre-industrial to post-industrial world and the way food can be the lens through which we look at creating the good life for all in a sitopia (her word meaning 'food place').
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Running order:
Introduction: 0 - 2 minutes 28 seconds
Part 1. Back to the beginning: 2 min 28 sec - 6 min 32 sec
Part 2. Rome: 6 min 32 sec - 9 min 17 sec
Part 3. Modelling the city: 9 min 17 sec - 16 min 45 sec
Part 4. Industry, food, railways & cities: 16 min 45 sec - 19 min 18 sec
Part 5. From grain to meat: 19 min 18 sec - 22 min 39 sec
Part 6. Beyond ‘cheap’ meat: 22 min 39 sec - 27 min 34 sec
Part 7. The city paradox: 27 min 34 sec - 31 min 33 sec
Part 8. Rethinking food & the city: 31 min 33 sec - 36 min 18 sec
Part 9. Creating sitopia: 36 min 18 sec - 38 min 30 sec
Part 10. Good food = good life: 38 min 30 sec - 43 min 18 sec
Part 11. Re-engaging cities with food: 43 min 18 sec - end
(Published 2016)
Further reading
On food, farming and the growth of cities:
Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, Collins 1981
Herbert Girardet, Cities, People, Planet, Wiley Academy 2004
Graham Harvey: We Want Real Food, Constable and Robinson, 2006
Frank E. Huggett, The Land Question and European Society, Thames and Hudson 1975
Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth, Earthscan 2010
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell 1998
Frank Lloyd Wright, The Living City, Horizon Press, New York, 1958.
Erik Millstone and Tim Lang, The Atlas of Food, Earthscan 2003
Jules Pretty, Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature, Earthscan 2002
Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Harper Collins 1996
E.F.Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Blond and Briggs1973
Carolyn Steel, Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, Chatto & Windus 2008, Vintage 2013
Caroly Steel, Sitopia - How Food Can Save the World, Chatto & Windus 2020
Reay Tannahill, Food In History, Penguin 1973
Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World, Allen Lane 1983
Colin Tudge, So Shall We Reap, Penguin 2004
On urban food systems and politics:
William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, W.W.Norton, 1991.
Jared Diamond, Collapse, Penguin 2006
George Dodd, The Food of London, London 1856
Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-Morrow, MIT Press,1965
Tim Lang and Michael Heasman, Food Wars, Earthscan 2004
Steven L. Kaplan, Provisioning Paris, Cornell University Press, 1984
Felicity Lawrence, Not On the Label, Penguin 2004
Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power, Penguin 1986
Thomas More, Utopia (1516), Trans. Paul Turner, Penguin, 2003.
Neville Morley, Metropolis and Hinterland: The City of Rome and the Italian Economy 200 BC-AD 200. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved, Portobello 2007
Paul Roberts, The End of Food, Bloomsbury 2009
On markets, supermarkets and public space:
Joanna Blythman, Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets, 4th Estate 2004
Charles Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect, Allen Lane 2006
Rem Koolhaas et al, Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, Taschen 2001
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell 1998
Anna Minton, Ground Control, Penguin 2009
Robert Webber: Covent Garden: Mud-Salad Market, London 1969
On food culture, eating and waste:
Joanna Blythman, Bad Food Britain, Fourth Estate 2006
John Burnett, England Eats Out, Pearson Longman 2004
Edwina Ehrman et al, London Eats Out, Museum of London 1999
James P. Johnston, A Hundred Years Eating, University Press Dublin 1977
Naomi Klein, No Logo, Flamingo 2001
Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, Oxford University Press 1993
Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food, Basil Blackwell 1985
Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food, Blackwell 1994
Carlo Petrini, Slow Food, Columbia University Press 2001
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Bloomsbury 2006
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, Penguin 2001
Rebecca Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant, Harvard 2001
Tristram Stuart, Waste, Penguin 2009
Michael Symons, A History of Cooks and Cooking, Prospect Books 2001
Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner, Penguin 1991
Links
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation
World Wildlife Fund: Living Planet Report
Food and Climate Research Network
New Economics Foundation (nef)
Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming
Carolyn Steel is an architect, lecturer and writer. Her chief interest is in exploring the inner lives of cities, and her work has focused on developing a lateral approach to urban design that looks at the everyday routines that shape cities and the way we inhabit them. She has run design studios at the London School of Economics, London Metropolitan University and at Cambridge University, where her lecture course ‘Food and the City’ became an established part of the degree programme.
During her career she realised that her twin passions for food and architecture were really two aspects of the same thing. After studying the everyday habits of a local neighbourhood in Rome over the course of 2000 years in the 1990s, and reflecting on her role as studio director of the Cities, Architecture and Engineering programme at the London School of Economics, where there were architects, politicians, economists, developers, sociologists, housing experts and engineers all gathered together in one room, struggling to find a common language with which to discuss cities she hit on the idea of using food as a common medium. Seven years later, her book Hungry City - How Food Shapes Our Lives was the result. Her follow-up book Sitopia - How Food Can Save the World, was published in 2020.
Follow-up
If you want to arrange for follow-up discussions for a class or group with Carolyn Steel via the internet – over Skype or some other service - please contact her.
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