About the Book
With cities becoming so vast, so entangled and perhaps so critically unsustainable, there is an urgent need for clarity around the subject of how we feed ourselves as an urban species. Urban food mapping becomes the tool to investigate the spatial relationships, gaps, scales and systems that underlie and generate what, where and how we eat, highlighting current and potential ways to (re)connect with our diet, ourselves and our environments.
Richly explored, using over 200 mapping images in 25 selected chapters, this book identifies urban food mapping as a distinct activity and area of research that enables a more nuanced way of understanding the multiple issues facing contemporary urbanism and the manyfold roles food spaces play within it. The authors of this multidisciplinary volume extend their approaches to place making, storytelling, in-depth observation and imagining liveable futures and engagement around food systems, thereby providing a comprehensive picture of our daily food flows and intrastructures. Their images and essays combine theoretical, methodological and practical analysis and applications to examine food through innovative map-making that empowers communities and inspires food planning authorities. This first book to systematise urban food mapping showcases and bridges disciplinary boundaries to make theoretical concepts as well as practical experiences and issues accessible and attractive to a wide audience, from the activist to the academic, the professional and the amateur. It will be of interest to those involved in the all-important work around food cultures, food security, urban agriculture, land rights, environmental planning and design who wish to create a more beautiful, equitable and sustainable urban environment.
Table of Contents:
Part 1: FOOD GROWING SITES: Reimagining land use Edible London: A greater London Agriculture Agroecologics: Reimagining an agri-urban design for Luxembourg Re-negotiating the boundaries between infrastructure and landscape: Mapping infrastructural ecologies Mapping urban agriculture potentials in Nerima City, Tokyo Mapping multifunctional agro-urban landscape to manage the edible city in North-Eastern Italy Part 2: FOOD SYSTEM ACTIVITIES: Recording economies, patterns and crises Using visual methods to map green infrastructure for a sustainable food economy in Letchworth Garden City A participatory digital mapping practice: Proposing Integrated Development Areas for food secure systems in cities Walking out for dinner: Discovering and mapping food choices in Saigon Follow the food… and the spaces it shapes Rupturing the mundane in times of crisis: New geographies of food in Hannover, Germany Part 3: FOOD STAKEHOLDERS: Proposing change for communities Lambeth plots: Two mapping projects highlighting existing and potential city spaces for food growing The practice of sharing: Mapping food networks in Delft, South Africa Six feet high and rising: Mapping the Edible City as a theatre of food Mapping seeds of freedom with Red de Huerteros Medellín Food in urban design and planning: The CPUL Opportunity Mapping Method Part 4: FOOD PRODUCE AND CULTURES: Uncovering the special in the everyday Oota Kathegalu: Tracing the food stories of Bengaluru, India Emblematic fruit: Mapping aguaje palm fruit vendors during Covid-19 in Iquitos, Peru Reimagining the (agri)cultural city: Commoning and cultivating relationships in Utrecht, Holland Participative food culture mapping in polarized urban districts A fairy tale of a place: Depictions of 21st century London as a fantasy foodscape in contemporary food writing Part 5: FOOD NETWORKS AND RESOURCES: Connecting people and places Food Atlas Vienna: A collective cartography of the urban food landscape Mapping Malus in Massachusetts: Creating a system for apple foraging The historic foodscapes of Lisbon: Mapping for a sustainable future A food security geonarrative: Mapping in/formal foodscapes in Bangalore, India Chicago’s urban food networks: Mapping the future of a thriving metropolitan foodshed
About the Author :
Katrin Bohn is an architect and urban practitioner and a principal lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK. Together with André Viljoen, she forms Bohn&Viljoen Architects, developing their food-focused urban design concept Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPUL) in theory and practice.
Mikey Tomkins is an independent researcher, artist and honorary research fellow at the University of Brighton, UK. He runs Edible Urban, a company that conducts the Edible Mapping Project, a participatory mapping project engaging communities in revisioning urban space for food production.
Review :
"A fascinating and timely account of the numerous ways in which urban food shapes our lives and how a spatial understanding of food can help us understand our impact on the world and our interconnectedness. With a cross-disciplinary approach and examples from across the world bringing a rich range of perspectives, this is a must-read for anyone studying urban food systems, culture and ecology."
Carolyn Steel, architect, urbanist, author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (2008) and Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World (2020), Great Britain
"Mapping cities is centuries old, but mapping food in and for cities is recent but fast growing and diversifying. This book offers a vital survey of the act and art of urban food mapping as a practice that is increasingly used as a participatory mechanism for bringing visibility to the place of food systems within urban systems. This rich and overdue addition to the literature on cities and food, in effect, maps urban food mapping."
Dr. Joe Nasr, architect, urbanist, urban agriculture pioneer, lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
"Food is central to our urban lives and shapes our cities and yet it often remains unseen in planning, in policy and indeed in the maps made of our cities. Urban Food Mapping creatively maps the many roles food plays in cities around the world and invites us to see urban spaces through new lenses. This book is a methodologically innovative and thought provoking addition to urban and food studies."
Dr. Jane Battersby, urban and human geographer, senior lecturer at the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa
"No matter from which perspective you look: if you are interested to move towards a productive urban food future, this book is a must-have! In a refreshing way, essays outline the breadth of questions and approaches to action, focusing on the role of different mapping methods as knowledge generators and communication tools. By carefully and astutely framing the approaches, the book discloses the revelatory power of mapping methods and outlines the need for urban food mapping as an urban practice and a future interdisciplinary field of research."
Undine Giseke, landscape architect, partner in bgmr Landschaftsarchitekten, professor emeritus at Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
"This book reminds us how important planning is and can be for the Great Food Transformation that science warns we need. It helps reconnect rural and urban realities, and unpick some crazy routes food takes. Should we be wary of top-down plans but embrace civic planning? Now read on…!"
Tim Lang, Emeritus Professor of Food Policy, City, University of London,Great Britain
"[The book's] advantages lie in its interdisciplinary approach and global case studies, which provide a comprehensive view of urban food mapping practices....The editors' and contributors' insights and experiences provide a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities in creating edible cities, making this book a cornerstone for further research and action in the field of urban food mapping."
Mohammad Reza Khalilnezhad, Faculty of Arts, University of Birjand, Iran, review for the Journal of Agriculture and Human Values
