Food supply take a tremendous effort (we take it for granted)! .

Lateral (unorthodox; associatively) thinking:
Food determines our lifes & cities/spatial dimension. By looking holistic (integraal) we see connected phenomenons/systems/patterns, while they first looked seperate things

Grain came by boat (from country side further away), meet from farms around the city, so meat markets placed more on the outside, grain close to the Thames. These are now important streets/squares!

Food has a gigantic social & physical impact on our lives & planet: strong relationship between Cities and food

We are the midle of a gastronomic revelution (art of delicious food & drinks), whining & dining, fancy specialized food shops, everywhere. On the other hand we have never spent less on food than now (20%, used to be much more)

Food industry & technology has supplied us with a great amount of (and great variety of) food that is cheap, while making the need for food appear unimportand

Duvel beer in China, restaurant in the desert (next to a ski slope)

Contrary to this food industry, we imagine the countryside/rural area with a romantic vision (uncapable to feed our metropolises)

Historic development of relationship between cities & the countryside

City & coutry combined (single entity)

Exeption because of grain taxes (occupation of lands)

Fresco painting in Sienna: effects of good government on city & country (look after your countryside, and it wil look after you)

Pre-industrial cities are compact because of physical difficulties:
how larger the city, how smaller the relative size of the hinterland, until it could no longer feed the city

Von Thünen model: the isolated city

Transport determined the way the hinterland was arranged: the fresher the product, the closer (milk/vegetables closeby, meat further (could walk alive in to the city)

Technology removed the chain between cities & rural hinterland & linkage between city people & farmers started to disintegrate

Grain made the ancient city, meat the industrial one

It became possible to raise animals/produce meat in an industrial manner (keep it good with salt). Cincanetty centre of meat packing industry

When it disappears, people start to appreciate it: romantic reactions

John Muir - Yosemite - national park: human activity excluded

Big (global) companies arose, smaller disappeared

Food clusters: supply chain 30 companies handle 30% global food trade

No longer driven by local culture, but by global economics of scale (FORDISM; reduce complexness of the proces)

Powers of supermarkets:

Ability to sell cheap, reliable food, at any time (night)

control of the supply chain, not takeover of the street shops

only large public spaces: embraced every aspect of human existance simultaneously (market -> country people), formal parties, revelutions, ritual space etc.

Authorities refuesed further licenses because of fear of losing control 17th century, so illagally shops appeared in buildings

High streets began to replace markets as food hubs in Britain (when the train came)

Creation of the supermarket/mall- Victor Gruen
(post war)

rise of suburban landscapes:
American Dream & car depended

Consequence: dying of downtown (abandoned/bad condition)

Vision Gruen: time old cities are over, feeling of togetherness/cozyness to the individual suburbia: Modern town square & social space: recreate urban program / High street indoors

Mall = city, but they competed with & won from the downtown (dying even more)

Shopping as attractor of people, but in reality: other functions were stripped away (economic reasons)

Supermarkets / Malls: not real public spaces: monofunctions (no space for other things): monopolies (power)

Ending of this trend = death of public space

City is a system, like food supply chain, you can design systems (so able to make better places)

Supermarkt & Urbanism (renewal) ->
British hypermarket

Britain: Suburbia british invention (Garden City), so creation of malls and applying the latest American adjustments: drive-ins

Town-centres & city-edges considered first, only if these were unsuitable out of town sites are permitted

Supermarketes found other ways: buying land and delevop supermarkets in urban areas (as a neighbourhood developer)

Expensive: offer a experience (exitements that markets used to create to a city)

Example Testco sustainable community Tolworth (gambit of supermarkets)

mall without walls: exclusive place/piece of the city, with own (hidden) rules, security, management etc.

Reletave new: traced back to succesful tourist attraction of Faneuill Hall in Boston (70's abandoned area)

Prototype "festival marketplace" concept of Rouse

Pre-industrial city
(Golden age of the ecosystem/craddle-to-craddle)

Mostly organic waste, seen as valuable resource, so everything was re-used

Cities grew larger, system started to break down, partly due to problems (dirty, smelly, unhygenic etc.)

Baroque plan (Wren), but urgency & complex land-ownership made it impossible to create sewage (hard to create with existing things -> properties reserved): same pattern was rebuild

Invention of toilets: water needed to go somewhere (underground), but pulled up: 1858 "The great Stink"& cholera

Broke the circle and turned it into a one-way system: pulles up ad the end: Thames

Dongtan (Architect: Arup; London) = first ecocity

Integrated urbanism
(applying multiple disciplines in urban plan)

live, work, shop in the own neighbourhood and at least some food-factories/production in the city

Recycle hub: strip incomming packaging & recyle on the spot

Green space fertallised by compast & waste water

Has good elements (inside), but is still linked/dependent to the unsustainable outside system gloabal supply system/city)

Howerd thought about a rearrangement of the world/system: rural area & cities were connected (network of connected self supplying city states)

Land ownership meant to be for the community, meaning rent will fund public needs, if land value arose, city would get rich, not individuals

Urban disciplines are fragmented, not thinking in a holistic way about urbansim

With which discipline do you start? Climate, capitalism, urbanism? FOOD CONNECTS ALL DISCIPLINES!

Alternative for the current power structure of food supply (not few big, network of small)

Who controls? the consumers (voting by buying)

More farmers: impact of food = countryside (landscape = product of farming)
We must eat the view = smaller scale of the landscape

More influence? system that joins leaves directly by it roots (decentralized)

Allotments for food production (18th century to help the poor), now in great demand

Often disruption needed to revail the food procution potential

Cuba: Government sponsored, all open space in suburbs converted into community-runned farms, Havana turned into a yield market-garden maze

One of the great questions of today: how to feed a city

1/3 grain production is food for animals, not humans (not efficient). Massive production landscapes: most of us don't see them

Meat & city population are growing hand in hand (future 2x much food and waste)

Great cost, not valued (much trown away in the West, 1 billion hungry in Africa)

Etichical/social capitalism (freedom & safity = good about liberalism)