Food for the City

By the year 2050 there will be nine billion people living on Earth. Seventy-five percent of them will be living in cities. If the world population continues to grow at this rate, it will take several extra planets just to produce the food that will be needed to feed it. While putting food on the table today seems to entail no more than a visit to the market for the average city dweller, a worldwide network of food producers and supermarket chains lies hidden behind our meals. It is a network of convenience, but one that poses new problems in that fewer people than ever decide what more people than ever eat. The result of a multi-year interdisciplinary program called "Foodprint," Food for the City offers 13 visions from experts across the world: a politician, an activist, an economist, a philosopher, a chef, an architect and a farmer, among others. From the visionary to the practical, their essays and proposals examine the influence food can have on the culture, shape and functioning of the city, addressing issues of urban farming and laboratory engineering, and weighing the choices to be made between altering our food production systems or our consumption patterns. The book comes with a timeline from 2050 BCE to 2050 CE and a rich pictorial essay that demonstrates how feeding a city has been a preoccupation as old as the city itself.