Food Common Spaces

MARIANA SANCHEZ SALVADOR marianasanchezsalvador@gmail.com t: +351 919573779 FOOD COMMON SPACES Eating can be taken as the most individual human act. As process, it’s absolutely confined to the individual’s body. Food is chewed, digested, absorbed within that limited space. Mechanical actions, biological interactions, chemical reactions, occur away from other people’s perception, triggering sensations that only that person experiences. Unlike thoughts, which might be communicated, unlike what one hears and sees, which might be showed and experienced by others, what is eaten by someone cannot be eaten by anybody else. Eating is completely introverted, private and personal.

Yet, something so basic, so primitive, could only be a powerful connector, common to all human beings. Common across time and geographies, from childhood to old age, from poor classes to high status, female and male.

“Hence, of all the things that people have in common, the most common is that they must eat and drink. And precisely this, in a remarkable way, is the most egotistical thing, indeed the one most absolutely and immediately confined to the individual.” (Simmel, 1997: 130) It’s a matter of survival. But the very fact that we must deprive Nature of something to eat, in order to stay alive, along with the choices and traditions incorporated in each meal, and even the social organisation and structure required to feed us, connects each human being to realities wider than themselves. Food is, thus, communal by excellence, linking humans with their natural and cultural surroundings. And, for that reason, its production, preparation, and consumption have been wrapped in rituals that engage us with each other and with our ancestors.

“As the body takes in the meal, it also incorporates the table service, furniture, dining room, and their various embellishments. Extending still further, the pleasure of a good meal contains thematic resonance between the food and its contexts, contexts that include not just the diners’ immediate surroundings but also the broader regional and cultural environments.”

(Anderson, 2004: 255) Food sharing is powerful. When we eat, we don’t merely ingest nutrients. We also embody food’s symbols and meanings, what we believe food represents and its transformative power. We will become healthy by eating healthy food, aggressive if food is deemed aggressive. Eating together, we become the same. Sharing matter, we share beliefs, behaviours and hopes. With that bound, we become, quite literally, companions — people who share bread (pan), or, more widely, sustenance.

“The fact that the same things are eaten, can give the idea that diners get, at least in part, the same substance. Commensality is, thus, a process of internalization of both food and the identity of other diners.” (Valeri, 1989: 200) Therefore, although eating possesses an extremely individual character, eating together places the individual before a group, with the meal becoming a social act. Food’s individualistic nature is what makes the reunion around the meal possible, transcending mere naturalism and developing into socialisation mediated by food. “[…] the shared meal elevates an event of physiological primitiveness and inevitable generating into the sphere of social interaction, and hence of supra-personal significance […].” (Simmel, 1997: 131) A group around a table entails solidarity and cooperation, one’s integration into a society. Alliances are forged, hierarchies established, agreements sealed. But it’s not, by any means, egalitarian: as a representation of a society or a group (Montanari, 2006), in the meal, hierarchies are emphasized in the shape of the table, seating arrangements, the distribution of food parts.

Food entails all this complexity, values, and connections, the juxtaposition between the individual and collective existence, the power of community, love, friendship, business, speculation, power, solicitations, protectorate, ambition, intrigue, like no other biological need or cultural rite.

Food spaces — e.g. spaces where food is produced, traded, tasted, and shared — hold and preserve this communal spirit, becoming socially meaningful settings. Behaviours, traditions, and values associated with (urban) vegetable gardens, markets, kitchens, and tables shape our communal life, how we interact with others, how we position ourselves in the world.

Allotments have been part of cities — human habitats per excellence — since their very beginnings.

In the Medieval Ages, horticultural patches, vineyards, orchards, even grain fields and common pastures not only surrounded the walls of villages but also sprouted within them, occupying empty spaces. Yields were particularly high, due to fertile soils and frequent manure. “[…] except for a few congested centers, the town of the Middle Ages was not merely in the country but of the country; food was grown within the walls, as well as on the terraces, or in the orchards and fields, outside.” (Mumford, 1970: 24) The existence of food-production and animal-breeding spaces within the walled limits ensured the city’s resilience, given that food supply from distant sources was often uncertain. It could even represent a matter of survival, in case of war or prolonged siege, allowing food to be produced within the city’s perimeter (Björklund, 2010: 21; Braudel, 1992: 435).

Historical cases included Castile, with possessed 12th-century walls built around enough area to accommodate herds, in case of emergency; the successive walls of Florence that also covered meadows and vegetable gardens; or the wide walls of Paris, Poitiers, Prague, Toulouse, Barcelona and Milan, which accommodated productive areas within (Morris, 1995: 106-218; Braudel, 1992: 435). Most European pre-industrial cities thus had access to agricultural land, with urban agriculture being a relevant, or at least complementary, urban economic activity, and taking a significant part of urban dwellers’ schedules. Some of these plots were privately owned or rented, but some were also commons, being explored by the community as a whole.

Food production spaces extended over the city surroundings, configuring a ‘charmed circle’ in 19thcentury London, notorious for the amount and variety of horticultural produce (Atkins, 2003: 135136). During the 17th and 18th centuries, nearby plots played an important role in food security and innovation: vegetables, fruit and medicinal herbs represented a reserve of multiple resources, but it was also here that one learned to cultivate delicate, fragile, still little-known plants.

Today, urban agriculture is still an important part of cities, though menaced by the intensity of urbanization processes. As an activity, it makes a more efficient use of space, soil, water, and other natural resources, providing higher yields. It contributes to food security, social inclusion, and complementary income (by saving money or by selling products), as well as to the health and wellbeing of communities, reducing hunger, and improving nutrition (Smit, Nasr and Ratta, 2001), allowing farmers to access a more varied diet, rich in fresh produce. It promotes social equity.

“Urban agriculture is an easy-in, easy-out entrepreneurial activity for people at different levels of income. For the poorest of the poor, it provides good access to food. For the stable poor, it provides a source of income and good quality food at low cost. For middle-income families, it offers the possibility of savings and a return on their investment in urban property. For small and large entrepreneurs, it is a profitable business.” (Smit, Nasr e Ratta, 2001: 2) The inclusion of trees, shrubs, food crops, flowers and other ornamental plants can aesthetically improve urban landscapes, while favourably affecting its microclimate, absorbing pollution and odours, improving air quality, and reducing noise (Mougeot, 2005: 12; Drescher and Iaquinta, 2002: 88), while generating shade and increasing humidity.

Since urban agriculture is generally intensively practiced and with the coexistence of several species, it promotes the diversity of urban habitats and increases biodiversity, while some species at risk are preserved (Drescher and Iaquinta, 2002: 79-88; Smit, Nasr and Ratta, 2001: 114-190). It also relieves pressure on natural reserves located outside cities, contributing directly to the preservation of natural resources (Drescher and Iaquinta, 2002: 79). Some of its main benefits rely on waste management, making use of residues and closing the metabolic loop.

But the significance of vegetable gardens as food spaces transcends the environmental, social, and economic impacts. Vegetable gardens and allotments — especially the ones with a long history — are heritage. At these places, gestures, traditions, and practices are reproduced in a cyclical rhythm, by successive generations of men and women. It’s a repetition of gestures that endures in time through practice, and not documents. Also, specific varieties of produce survive here, being grown each season, their seeds kept, and the respective culinary heritage, based on these products, retained.

Therefore, vegetable gardens, and particularly in an urban context, where multiple communities interact, hold a key role in cultural identity, spatial character, and sense of place.

Other set of food spaces that has been crucial in our interaction with each other and our surroundings are food markets. Markets have always played a strong role in cities — not only economic, but also political and cultural — occupying their physical and symbolic centre, since Antiquity.

The relationship between city and market was unbreakable: the market belonged to the city, and this was one of the most basic functions that the city performed for its surrounding territory.

Location was key: the market is often placed at the intersection of commercial routes, or major roads. Cities such as Lyon, Milan, Zurich, Nuremberg, and Leipzig were, in fact, originally places of fairs and markets in the convergence of roads. Thus, some markets preceded their cities, generating a concentration of flows long before the community settled.

In their most elementary sense, these historical markets were unbeatable for the products’ freshness, brought from the surroundings, their lower prices, derived from the absence of intermediaries, transparent and supervised exchange. They were the centre of social life: it was where people met, listened, insulted, threatened, and fought; that political and other news circulated; they were the set of incidents, the place of agreements and business.

Architecturally, markets could take on different urban forms, either in an open plaza or covered bazaar — plaza, campo, piazza, grand-place — in the city centre (often associated with the temple or church); in a flat piece of land outside the walls, which would gradually be absorbed by the urban fabric; in the wider part of the main street; or in streets with stalls and shops. Later, markets were formalized into specifically designed buildings (market-halls), which often occupied the locations of previous markets.

“The physical design of markets in cities had given food consumption a central role in convivial public space, and this allowed the spatial intertwining of the material, political and spiritual dimensions of life on an everyday basis. Food markets were critical elements of the urban armature that created and reinforced a sense of civic connection, and their social and cultural role was powerful in supporting conviviality.” (Parham, 2015: 81)

This persistence is, actually, an important characteristic of food markets. Once a location is adopted, it tends to endure over time and, apart from deep urban transformations, food exchanges continue to occur in the same place, or close by. Thus, in Marseille, the Greek market place was occupied by the Roman forum and later by the medieval market, while, in Lucca, the Roman forum gave way to a medieval market, which has remained until today (Parham, 2015: 74-75). “Such physical longevity is typical of markets everywhere — once established, they very rarely move.� (Steel, 2013: 120) Often, markets also spread through the neighbouring streets, namely those that connected to city gates, configuring a trade network (Morris, 1995: 107). Open-air markets, food shops, taverns and restaurants tended to cluster, formalizing rich, sense-appealing, and diverse food streets.

At times, the pressure exerted by food trade over cities was enormous. As markets grew, their affluence, detritus, rhythms, and circulation were imposed on the city. Thus, any free space was quickly taken over by food trade. Surprising situations resulted from this pressure, as in Moscow, where every winter a full market was erected over the frozen Moskva River. Products arrived through sleds and naturally frozen meats were available for sale. A similar situation occurred in London during an exceptionally cold winter, in 1683, which blocked the circulation of boats on the Thames and traffic on the streets, leading to the installation of a gigantic market on the frozen river.

Historical engravings and paintings illustrate these situations, with some humour.

The increasing volume of exchanges, potentiated by the growing hygienist concerns, led to the construction of halls in the 19th and 20th centuries: covered, permanent and specialized markets, an architectonic typology that has become iconic of several European cities. Different building types, in iron and glass structures, were designed to accommodate diverse goods, with different requirements, with galleries and spacious cellars.

The fact that markets were, or are still, often located in a square, an open space for socializing, was not exempt: it represented political freedom and action (Parham, 2015: 72). Also, for Steel (2013: 122), markets and politics have maintained an old relationship, keeping these squares an important political role even after the abandonment of their first functions, as one can see in the high number of City Councils located in marketplaces, throughout Europe.

“From the beginning of the development of villages, towns and cities, the food market has taken place in public areas of the settlement, and the cultural relationships between state, religious and civil society that underpin urban development, have been closely connected in a publicly accessible set of spaces in which the food market is central.” (Parham, 2015: 74) Vegetable gardens, food markets, and food streets are just some examples of food spaces that are meaningful for communities, and that have — with different configurations — been present across the world and across history, as archetypes. As a whole, food spaces compose a foodscape that shapes our identity and relationship — and, therefore, attitudes — towards natural surroundings, cultural surroundings, and fellow human beings. Food spaces are crucial on how we, as society, manage common resources as land, water, and biodiversity, and immaterial ones manifested in culture and knowledge. However, these food spaces are nowadays under threat — along with the civic values entailed — either by changing their nature and potential, or by disappearing completely, with rippling effects on our balance with the planet.

We witness how food-systems presence has been progressively diminished in urban contexts, a situation that contrasts widely with the pre-industrial realities described. The Modern-city concept privileged zoning, separating activities such as dwelling, trade, work, and leisure. These were no longer perceived as places for food production, which was taken as an improper — almost illegitimate — land use, which should give way to more sophisticated, clean, and efficient urban models.

In fact, food production has been eliminated so thoroughly from cities that they’re even defined as having non-agricultural land uses, functions, and jobs (Atkins, 2003: 133). Nature is allowed only if domesticated, in manicured parks and private gardens. Thus, cities are developed as pedigree landscapes, with non-productive green spaces that consume energy, disconnected from ecology notions (Parham, 2015: 166). Green is only visual. Agriculture in the city is limited and relegated to the outskirts or the countryside. Small vegetable gardens, orchards and vineyards tend to be destroyed; farmed spaces are built over.

“This view holds that the city has space only for recreational gardens, forests, and neat lawn patches — and none for growing food (except perhaps for ‘recreational’ kitchen gardens).

The use of urban waste to enrich soil is regarded as unsanitary, and the sanitation system is intended to remove waste from the city — and get it out of sight.” (Smit, Nasr e Ratta, 2001: 247) But it’s not only food production that is being lost. Wholesale markets were shifted from the centres to the peripheries, and traditional market buildings declined. Food streets — apart, maybe, from restaurant streets — with small specialized establishments for food production, processing and distribution, and shops, are losing their centrality to big peripheral shopping spaces, within this new urban conception.

“New development intentionally avoided building housing over food shops, arcaded edges to streets, human-scaled enclosed squares, lively centres based on food trading or in close physical proximity to market, city government and housing. A Corbusian-inspired vision of the city as a set of towers in a green park replaced earlier approaches where food markets had been central to constructing the enclosed outdoor rooms that made up public space.”

(Parham, 2015: 82)

Food production, wholesale and food consumption are placed kilometres apart, thus creating a physical and mental detachment between consumer and producer, with added environmental consequences, due to the increasing food miles, which, at times, cover the whole globe. With this tendency, activities that reinforced social interaction and conviviality through food are more and more lost, reducing the experiential diversity of public space.

Moreover, food spaces have been subjected to privatization, with the private sector increasingly dominating food activities and removing them from the public spectrum. Confined to private spaces, they unfold under defined schedules, rules, and security, where individuality and freedom are controlled. Large markets give way to supermarket chains, of various dimensions and ‘concepts’, the sale of food and prepared meals by street vendors gives way to (chain) restaurants, cafes and similar establishments, removing these activities from the public realm. The very architecture of these food spaces is often sacrificed, through standardization and efficiency, with the ‘big box design’ dominating food processing factories and fast food, grocery, and wholesale stores.

Public spaces used to be stages of urban culture, but as their multifunctionality gives way to concepts with a single, planned function, public spaces become empty — with important social consequences, since people become unaccustomed with participating in urban life — and begin to be perceived as dangerous. The political (from the Greek polis, ‘city-state’) consequences are notorious — it was it was no accident that shared kitchens, and at times dining spaces, were key in communist housing models.

Furthermore, one may still refer to food gentrification — which triggers or emphasizes social imbalance. While we witness a disappearance of production spaces from the city, consumption spaces have increased, with restaurants, cafes, and bars proliferating, in addition to festivals and other gastronomic events (Steegmann, 2017: 13). In this context, food is used as a tool for urban revitalization of neighbourhoods that offer culturally rich gastronomic experiences, known as foodie neighbourhoods, as in Barcelona, London or Berlin, or the spread of specialized supermarkets and deli stores.

As new, more expensive food businesses take over, the previous — at times more traditional — ones are forced to abandon these areas, being unable to cope with rising rents (Steegmann, 2017: 216). This can generate paradoxical situations, such as the abundance of quality food, which is not

within the financial reach of resident populations, a phenomenon known as food mirages (Cohen, 2018).

The historical, cultural, and political role that food held in urban spaces, along with food’s capacity to generate urban life, unplanned events, and different activities, is being lost at the hands of these new city views, which evidently reflect wider societal transformations. The challenge of food systems within urban environments is, therefore, not only a theoretical problem, but also, and perhaps more significantly, a practical and political one (Morgan and Sonnino, 2010: 222), which requires the participation of governments and local authorities, and their integration into urban planning policies and instruments. Architects and planners have, unfortunately, been widely absent from this reflexion — maybe apart from designing restaurants or grand market halls. “[…] food has too often been relegated to the margins of the design disciplines, as a takenfor-granted aspect of place, narrowly conceived as offering a surface gloss of vitality or applied as a kind of pleasant afterthought in spatial design terms.” (Parham, 2015: 268) However, there is an increasing recognition that space is not merely a scenario where these food activities take place, but also that they impact space design in numerous ways. Synergies can be enhanced between food land uses, such as the recurring presence of shops, inns, cafes, restaurants, festivals and street vending around the markets (Parham, 2015: 128), but also food production can be reintroduced in the city’s green spaces, adding social and economic dimensions to their environmental advantages. Urban planners and architects can contribute with their skills not only to implement these solutions, but also to enhance results, through design.

“Food, in turn, is central to urbanism, because it is so critical to creating and maintaining this vitality, complexity and intimacy, because it can help make and support walkable, mixed, human-scaled and diverse places and because it can increase the focus of urban space on the public realm.” (Parham, 2015: 2) Food systems have a very broad urban potential, crossing multiple scales, which can only be achieved if approached in a global and holistic way. For architects, this will mean rethinking cities, the principles that govern urbanism, their urban form and buildings themselves, in permanent dialogue with civil society, its various organizations, associations and NGOs, public sector and private sector, who are involved with food systems, universities and other research institutions, and local and municipal governments, in order to achieve the solutions that will best serve the interests and needs of society, as a whole, and of the planet — in the short, medium and long term.

Food connects us with everything that makes us human, holding an extraordinary potential for change. As a tool, it can promote a more balanced and sustainable world, or exacerbate inequalities.

Acting responsibly over food spaces is, thus, a step towards shaping communities, their interactions and impacts towards natural and cultural surroundings.

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