FoodMapping for Change – Making Visible Future Resilient Potentials for Urban Environments
Vanessa Braun, Masters Student
Technical University Vienna
Daniel Loeschenbrand, PhD Student
Technical University Vienna
Angelika Psenner, Associate Professor
Technical University Vienna
Abstract
Food, as the fundamental basis of human existence, is a major cross-cutting issue and combines social, economic, environmental and political aspects due to its enormous complexity. Diet is responsible for a large part of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental damage. In parallel, cities are the nodes of production, distribution and consumption of material goods in the global material flow system. It is surprising that cities and city governments have completely ignored and dismissed this issue in the course of globalization and technologization. Food travels through different spaces in its various stages, from production to distribution and consumption to disposal. This project addresses precisely this gap - it aims to provide a fundamental reflection on how food metabolism has the power to shape settled space, and it questions urban typologies in terms of their contribution to climate-resilient design. The city of Vienna serves as an experimental space; the scale of the city is used as a level of action to investigate food-related spaces and typologies, and furthermore to address social and economic change for a future resilient environment. The project offers the opportunity to understand and experience food in the context of space with its global and local characteristics from an urban planning perspective.
