CAROLYN STEEL

The connection between architecture and inhabitation has fascinated me for as long as I can remember.  Since childhood, I’ve had a fascination with buildings, which led me to study architecture at Cambridge. However, I quickly realised that my interest in architecture wasn’t the traditional one; I was drawn to something else that I couldn’t put my finger on. I felt that something essential was missing from the dominant architectural narrative. That missing element, I eventually realised, was life itself. Cities and buildings are designed with people in mind; yet in grappling with the physical complexity of getting something built, the more personal aspect of buildings – their relationship with their human inhabitants – often seemed to get overlooked.

Throughout my career, this sense of connection to buildings has persisted, along with a growing interest in food. I’m not sure quite where this came from – perhaps the fact that I spent most of my childhood holidays in my grandparents’ hotel – but food increasingly appeared in my projects, and later in my studies and teaching. I loved food because it was the focus of daily life, and thus brought people together to animate public space in the city. My appointment as the inaugural Studio Director of the Cities Program at the London School of Economics was pivotal. I found myself among sociologists, anthropologists, housing experts, planners, economists and architects, all discussing the city. This broad discourse was invigorating, but I realised that people still remained in their professional silos.

In the spring of 2000, I finally had my lightbulb moment during a conversation with one of my colleagues at the LSE, Roger Zogolovitch. We discussed the idea of writing a book together about cities, and during that conversation the thought suddenly came to me: how might one describe a city through the lens of food? I remember getting goose-bumps: I immediately knew that this was what I had been searching for all these years.

Two decades later, I remain amazed by food’s power to reveal the world to us. For me, the most striking thing is how something so ubiquitous and familiar can have such enormous ramifications for our lives. We fail to ‘see’ food for what it is – our most vital and valuable shared resource – partly because we’ve made it appear so cheap. We pay less for it now than at any time in history, yet the hidden costs are mounting. Climate change, deforestation, soil degradation, water depletion, pollution, obesity and mass extinction are just some of the side effects of the way we eat today. Industrial agriculture is now our most damaging global activity, yet modern urbanity depends on it.

I think if we reframe our desires – what we truly want – we can begin to change our idea of what a good life is. Our most vivid memories are often tied to food, making it a powerful emotional trigger that can be used to change people’s perspectives. One can appeal to such sentiments simply by asking someone about a memorable meal they’ve had. Such memories awaken our innate connection to food and to its value, which ultimately impacts on our attitudes and behaviours towards each other and the world at large.

The challenge is to redefine a good life for the twenty-first century in a way that resonates with people’s desires, yet sits within ecological boundaries. It’s a significant shift, but one that’s entirely achievable. As the late, great David Graeber put it, society is made by humans and can therefore be remade by us. Indeed, the change is already happening, and we can catch glimpses of what the future might look like, such as certain shifts in behaviour we witnessed under lockdown. A new way of life will require different priorities, but it is very much within our reach.

I think it’s useful to look at developments over the past couple of centuries that have led us to the point where traditional food cultures are now the exception, and continue to be undermined.

Industrialisation has been the main culprit behind the destruction of traditional ways of life, along with the traditional food cultures at their core. Such cultures embody the essence of locality, complexity and a deep understanding of place. The industrial project destroyed such cultures, along with the knowledge and wisdom embedded in them as to how to live well in a certain territory. Such wisdom, often refined over many centuries, was replaced by new imperatives for uniformity and large-scale, so-called ‘efficiencies’.

The industrial project commodified both land and people in order to provide the materials and labour necessary to create a market economy. Traditional societies were dismantled, farmland enclosed, and displaced rural populations forced to work in factories. Land and people became interchangeable units of production, a process eloquently described by Karl Polanyi in his wonderful book The Great Transformation. In many ways, we live with this legacy today. Severing people’s connection with the land and with centuries-old rituals around food is not just a displacement but an erasure of culture and community. By losing control of their sustenance, people lost their independence and were forced into servitude.

Our food system’s resilience depends on how our food is produced, and our level of engagement with it as consumers. By valuing food and being closer to those who grow it on our behalf, we can influence the system through our demands and desires, encouraging more diversity and nature-friendly practices, rather than a commodity-based, industrial model. Carlo Petrini’s concept of ‘co-producing’ is key, emphasising our need to evolve from mere passive consumers of food to active participants in the food system. The current trend towards valuing crafts, making and mending and saving resources suggests a desire for greater participation that can be used to nudge our food culture towards greater diversity and resilience. Food never exists in isolation, but is always rooted in all aspects of life, society, culture, and ecology. Our hunter-gatherer and farming ancestors lived closely entwined with the origins of their meals—engendering a sense of kinship and belonging that we need to rekindle. Involving city-dwellers in food production is not mere whimsy, but a way of returning us to our essential roots.

Yes, absolutely! Instilling respect for food through education and active engagement nurtures an instinctive understanding and respect for the cycle of life – and what it takes to sustain us.

The fragility and precariousness of our current food system—which is closely linked to the ecological crisis—could be partly countered if we were to transition from passive consumption to active co-production. Imagine a child growing some vegetables for the first time. Such a hands-on experience helps to establish the child’s view of the world and their understanding of their place in it, engendering a lasting respect for the living things without which none of us would be here.