Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (56 page)

28
Howard had first-hand experience of the American Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed anyone to stake a claim to 160 acres of farmland for free, provided they built a house on it and proved themselves capable of farming it successfully for five years.

29
Identified by him as unsanitary overcrowding in towns and lack of services and opportunity in the countryside.

30
Ebenezer Howard,
Garden Cities of To-Morrow
(1902), MIT Press paperback edition, 1965, pp.60–2.

31
Ibid., p.51.

32
Density figures converted from Lewis Mumford,
The Garden City Idea and
Modern Planning
, in ibid., p.32.

33
Howard, op.cit., p.142.

34
See Peter Hall,
Cities of Tomorrow
, Blackwell, 2002, pp.97–101.

35
See Le Corbusier,
The City of To-morrow and its Planning
(
Urbanisme
, 1922), trans. Frederick Etchells, Dover Publications, New York, 1987.

36
Le Corbusier,
Oeuvres Complètes
1, p.118.

37
Frank Lloyd Wright,
The Living City
, Horizon Press, New York, 1958, pp.25 and 20.

38
‘Usonia’ was Samuel Butler’s name for North America.

39
Wright, op.cit., p.62.

40
Ibid., p.60.

41
Ibid., pp.129–31.

42
Ibid., pp.118–19.

43
Atmos
in ancient Greek means vapour,
sitos
food, and
sphaira
ball.

44
http://www.countryside.gov.uk/LAR/archive/ETV/index.asp
.

45
The term ‘permaculture’ (from permanent + agriculture) was invented by the Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who outlined their vision of an eco-friendly sustainable agriculture in their book
Permaculture One
in 1978.

46
See Colin Tudge,
So Shall We Reap
, Allen Lane, 2003, pp.345–51.

47
See Christopher Alexander,
A City is Not a Tree
, Architectural Forum, vol.122, No.1, April 1965.

48
La Via Campesina website,
http://www.viacampesina.org
.

49
John Stuart Mill,
On Liberty
, John W. Parker and Son, London, 1859, p.22.

50
File on Four
, BBC Radio, 13 March 2007.

51
Eglus are made by a firm called Omlet:
http://www.omlet.co.uk
.

52
‘Hens rule the roost in suburbia’,
The Sunday Times
, 5 April 2007.

53
David Crouch and Colin Ward,
The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture
, Faber and Faber, 1988, p.76.

54
Raymond J. Struyk and Karen Angelici, ‘The Russian Dacha Phenomenon’,
Housing Studies
, Vol.II, Issue 2, April 1996, pp.233–50.

55
Oleg Moldakov,
Support for Urban Agriculture Needs Integration in St Petersburg
, RUAF, Resource centres on urban agriculture and food security,
http://www.ruaf.org/node/174
.

56
A 1970s BBC sitcom in which a suburban family, the Goods, scandalised their neighbours by digging up their suburban garden and turning it into a farm.

57
See Jorge Peña Díaz and Phil Harris, ‘Urban Agriculture in Havana, Opportunities for the Future’, in André Viljoen (ed.),
CPULs, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes
, Architectural Press, 2005, p.137.

58
Sinan Koont, ‘Food Security in Cuba’,
Monthly Review
, vol.55, no.8, January 2004,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0104koont.htm
.

59
Viljoen, op.cit., p.11.

60
http://www.verticalfarm.com
.

61
Ibid.

62
Based on a population of 10 million, that is the number of vertical farms that would be needed to feed London, according to Despommier’s figures.

63
http://www.verticalfarm.com
.

64
http://www.mvrdv.nl/_v2/projects/181_pigcity/index.html
.

65
Patrick Geddes,
The Valley Plan of Civilization, The Survey
, 54, pp.40–4, quoted in Hall, op.cit., p.149.

66
Patrick Geddes,
Cities in Evolution
(1915), Routledge, 1997, p.96.

67
Richard Rogers,
Cities for a Small Planet
, Faber and Faber, 1997, pp.32–3.

68
Towards an Urban Renaissance
: Report of the Urban Task Force, Lord Rogers of Riverside (Chair), Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1999.

69
Susan Emmett, ‘A new property map of England’,
The Times
, 22 June 2007.

70
Carlo Petrini,
Slow Food: The Case for Taste
, Columbia University Press, 2001, p.10.

71
Cittaslow manifesto,
http://www.cittaslow.net
.

72
Ibid.

73
Bradford City Council website.

74
http://transitiontowns.org/Totnes/
.

75
It is ironic that milk floats, by virtue of working for a virtual monopoly, actually delivered one of the ‘greenest’ food delivery systems yet.

76
Community-supported agriculture is a growing movement in both the USA and the UK, in which city-dwellers invest in local farms, guaranteeing them a market and even in some cases helping the farmer to work his land.

Every idea has its sources; every book its mentors. I am greatly indebted to Dalibor Vesely and Peter Carl, whose inspirational teaching at the Department of Architecture at Cambridge University opened my eyes (along with those of countless others) to the true horizons of our discipline. To have had their continued friendship and support through the writing of
Hungry City
has been a great joy. I hope they won’t mind my saying that I consider them to be its intellectual godfathers. For persuading me I was capable of writing a book, David Bass and Rowan Moore deserve all my thanks. Rowan’s early advice and encouragement were invaluable, while David has been my chief sounding-board and critic throughout. I could not have wished for two better mentors for my first book, and their wit and intelligence is woven into its pages. I am also greatly indebted to Wendy Pullan, who invited me to create my first lecture series on
Food and the City
at the Department of Architecture at Cambridge. Her leap of faith and continued support have meant a great deal.

Finding a literary agent was a grisly process, so when Jonny Pegg of Curtis Brown responded to my proposal with a resounding ‘Yes!’, it was one of the best moments of my life. I am extremely grateful to Jonny for his unstinting enthusiasm, and for sticking with me through the arduous process of finding a publisher with similarly lateral vision. Our search came to an end when Chatto & Windus took me on, and I am hugely grateful to Alison Samuel and my editor Poppy Hampson,
for taking a punt on a first-time writer with such uncharted subject matter. I would like to thank Poppy especially for all her enthusiasm and encouragement, her patient handling of me and uncomplaining hard work. One could not wish for a more sympathetic editor.

The arguments within
Hungry City
have evolved over many years, and through countless conversations. My warmest thanks to all those who have selflessly given their time and energy to reading drafts of the text and giving me their comments: Charisse Amand, Matthew Barac, David Bass, Cressida Bell, Claire Bennie, Nick Bullock, Lulu Chivers, Chris Dawe, Dominik Dlouhy, Neil Grange, Nick Horsley, Richard Nightingale, Robert Kennett, Georgia Lowe, Rowan Moore, Jeremy O’Sullivan, Stefan Schlobach, Stanley Steel, Max Steuer, Dalibor Vesely and Stephen Witherford. Grateful thanks also to all those whose debate and engagement have contributed so much to shaping the book: Cany Ash, Peter Carl, Sam Causer, Liz Dowler, James Fisher, Jane Fisher-Hunt, Simon Fujiwara, Mark Hewitt, Stephen Hunt, Alex Laird, Tim Lang, Helen Mallinson, Michael Mallinson, Anna Minton, Juliet Odgers, Arthur Potts-Dawson, Polly Russell, Robert Sakula, David Sawer, Liz Stretch, Simon Tucker, Brian Vermeulen, Nick Warner, David Willink and Roger Zogolovitch. Roger may be last in the list, but he is first in essence, since it was during a conversation with him that the idea for
Hungry City
first took shape. In addition, I would like to thank all those who have generously offered their professional insight and expertise, in particular Peter Clarke of Kingcup Farm, who gave up many hours of his time to share his extensive knowledge of farming and the food industry with me. Many thanks also to Zeenat Anjari and Ben Reynolds at Sustain, Keith and Liz Bennett of Stockings Farm, Cheryl Cohen of London Farmers’ Markets, Simone Crofton of Borough Market, Fred Duncan of Grampian Country Food Group, Mick Evans and Steve Crawford of Walkers Midshire Foods, Neil Grange and Alejandro Gutierrez of Arup, Kevin Hand of Pennine Foods, and Claire Pritchard of Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency.

One of the most unexpected and delightful aspects of writing
Hungry City
has been the many friends I have made along the way; an astonishing number through Claire Hartten, whose open-spirited
Dirt
Café
project is a table society for the modern age. Its meetings, generously hosted by Patricia Michelson and Sarah Bilney at
La Fromagerie
in Marylebone (London’s only political cheese shop), provided a wonderful forum for debate and sharing at a time when I was first feeling my way in the world of food. My heartfelt thanks to all of them for their hospitality and support. Special thanks also to Nick Horsley, Karen Gilbert and Susan and Julian Elias, for inviting me to wonderful dinners and allowing me to describe them in the book. Particular thanks also to Richard Nightingale, who has put up with my multi-faceted career for many years, and has always been hugely generous in his friendship and advice. Thanks also to Simon Monkman and Elissa Schlanker for keeping my work safe, to Marion Houston for her administrative help, and to my dear brother Brian, who talked me out of the trees several times through various hi-tech nightmares, and memorably rescued an unrepeatable day’s work from the oblivion of computer meltdown.

I am most grateful to the Arts Council, whose grant in 2006 helped me to write
Hungry City
full time, and to the Royal Society of Literature and the Jerwood Foundation, whose prize for non-fiction was awarded to
Hungry City
in 2006. To have the approbation of such august judges as Hilary Spurling, Moris Farhi and Roland Chambers so early in my writing career was a great boost.

The constant help and encouragement I have received through the writing of this book (including those of many people not specifically mentioned here) has moved me more than I can say. One person, however, requires a further mention. The unfailing support of David Bass, his insight and judgement, humour and companionship, have made the writing of
Hungry City
feel more of a shared effort than a solo one. DB, thank you from the bottom of my heart – I really can’t think how I would have done this without you.

Books as broad in scope as
Hungry City
necessarily rely on the research and scholarship of others. Since it has not always been possible to do them full justice in the text, I have listed below the key works that have helped and inspired me through the writing of this book.

Massimo Montanari’s
Culture of Food
formed the basis of my understanding of European food culture, and Fernand Braudel’s
Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century
that of its material life.
Man and the Natural World
by Keith Thomas is a scholarly analysis of attitudes towards nature in early modern England; Simon Schama’s
Landscape and Memory
a penetrating exploration of man’s relationship with wilderness. George Dodd’s 1856
The Food of London
is a remarkable survey of the Victorian capital’s food supply; Stephen Kaplan’s
Provisioning Paris
a similarly exhaustive account of the grain supply to that of eighteenth-century France. My analysis of the modern British food industry draws on the work of many campaigning food journalists, foremost among them Joanna Blythman and Felicity Lawrence, as well as on pioneering studies carried out by Sustain, the New Economics Foundation and Tim Lang at the City University Food Policy Unit. For anyone wishing to understand the roots of modern American food culture, Harvey Levenstein’s
Paradox of Plenty
is essential reading, while
Stephen Mennell’s
All Manners of Food
is equally indispensable on the subject of French and English cuisine. Margaret Visser’s
The Rituals of Dinner
is the perfect introduction to the subject of table manners, while the Museum of London’s publication
London Eats Out: 500 Years of Capital Dining
is full of detailed facts about the capital’s historical eateries. Rebecca Spang’s
The Invention of the Restaurant
is a scholarly study of the origins of restaurant dining in Paris and John Burnett’s
A Social History of Housing
an equally insightful account of nineteenth- and twentieth-century domestic mores in Britain. Donald Reid’s
Paris Sewers and Sewermen
provides an original critique of cultural attitudes towards waste in the nineteenth-century city and Peter Hall’s
Cities of Tomorrow
a scholarly analysis of twentieth-century urban planning. My vision of a possible future for ethical agriculture is indebted to Jules Pretty’s
Agri-Culture
and Colin Tudge’s
So Shall We Reap
, and to the campaigning work of the Soil Association and the Slow Food Movement.