I recently watched this TED Talk by UK food author and activist, Carolyn Steel about how food shapes cities. To explore this question she starts with another question: “how do you feed a city?”. Although the answer to this question seems obvious because people in cities eat multiple times every day, fairly carelessly, she presses the issue farther to discuss how the growth of cities relates to the growth of industrial farming practices that are disconnecting people from food practices and nature, and creating environmentally destruction.
Carolyn takes a historical analysis to examine how agriculture and cities have a an intertwined history. She traces this history from ancient Rome to 17th century London, to the 1950’s to examine how this relationship has changed.
I really like this video because she ends her talk with an interesting solution to the problem outlined in the beginning. I wont tell you the solution, because I think you should see her talk yourself, but I want to make the connection between her focus on London to that of Toronto.
Given Toronto’s nick-name of “Hog Town” I think it would be important to trace Toronto’s “food history” as Carolyn does for London in order to get a better perspectives on where the problems lie to better form solutions to these problems. What would a cartography of Toronto’s food history look like, and how did it shape our city?
Comments