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RE-EMBEDDING LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS: AN OUTLINE FOR BYKER

THESIS DOCUMENT EMILY COWELL

CONTENTS

Presentation Synopsis Appendix - Thesis Outline Appendix - Further design work

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STUDIO: THE BIG HERE AND THE LONG NOW This studio’s focus is on ‘the bigger picture’, looking wider than the immediate context of a building, site, or material, to the flows, fabrication and processes that enable it to exist. This is coupled with a consideration for the lifecycle of materials and how they could be reused, recycled, or disassembled.

Material Flows - Physical imprint of commodities exchange, Venice Biennale, 2018

THESIS INTRODUCTION

Applying the studio’s approach to a specific area to investigate I chose food, with one third of the world’s edible food being wasted each year, whilst the intensity of food production causes significant environmental impact. Furthermore, I wanted to explore the dynamics and disconnect between food producer and food consumer. Urban living plays a large role in this disassociation, with 67% of food produced destined for cities whilst its occupants have little to no relationship to the production of food. Therefore, in this thesis I am proposing the implementation of a circular food economy, including the local production of food, into a neglected district of Newcastle, Byker.

LOCATION INTRODUCTION Byker is the second most deprived ward in Newcastle and its high street, Shield’s Road, has been named the worst in Britain. This presents the opportunity to integrate circular food proposals whilst revitalising the area and addressing some of its issues.

Byker Estate

Byker High Street

PROGRAMME The proposed programme encompasses three phases covering Byker, with one element, a culinary school designed to a greater level of detail.

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

A LINEAR FOOD SYSTEM

BILLIONS OF TONNES ANNUALLY fresh water fertilisers + pesticides fossil energy

2.9

4.3

food destined for cities

food for human consumption

7.1

1.4

production for food globally

food destined for outside cities

1.1

soil

2.4

food eaten in cities

0.5 wasted in cities

2.3

human waste in cities

production and processing losses

1.7

2.8

animal feed and other uses

organic waste in cities

>2%

of valuable nutrients looped by cities

*data source, Cities and the Circular economy for food, The Ellen Macarthur Foundation

THE EVOLUTION OF FOOD SUPPLY NETWORKS

1880

Medieval

5km ~ 3miles

2020

Regional Airport

Somerset and Dorset Line (1862-1966)

Cheddar Valley Line (1861 - 1951)

Regional Port

1km

10000km

1000km

100km

10km

10km <1% imported food is aifreighted

road

rail

sea

air

FOOD ORIGIN FROM NEWCASTLE GREENGROCER

THE DISTRIBUTION NETWORK FOR MORRISONS’ CARROTS

FOOD WASTE COLLECTION

CROPS GROWN IN THE REGION

THE VON THUNEN MODEL

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN AN ISOLATED STATE

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN AN ISOLATED STATE WITH MODIFIED CONDITIONS

NEWCASTLE

NEWCASTLE central city market gardening ﬁrewood and lumber production crop farming without fallow crop farming, fallow and pasture three-ﬁeld system livestock farming river or sea

cent market gar ﬁrewood and lumber prod 25 crop farming without crop farming, fallow and p three-ﬁeld s

HISTORIC FOOD MARKETS OF NEWCASTLE

A CIRCULAR ECONOMY FOR FOOD

3 AMBITIONS APPLIED TO BYKER

BYKER DEMOGRAPHICS

CURRENT FOOD INITIATIVES

FOOD BANKS Food banks are charitable organisations set up to provide food to people struggling to purchase enough to avoid hunger. In the UK, care professionals can issue food bank vouchers to people in crisis, enabling them to receive a food bank parcel. This parcel normally provides enough food for three days through non-perishable items. In Byker, there are the following organisations: A. THE NEWCASTLE EAST TRUSSEL TRUST FOOD BANK B. CONNECT25 FOOD BANK Furthermore, there are several other food initiatives in the area: 1. BYKER PANTRY They have a points system to buy food at around half the price of supermarkets. The idea is to give more choice and a sense of independence to everyone using the pantry. Additionally, unlike a food bank there is no referral required. 2. BYKER COMMUNITY TRUST The Trust run several initiatives such as Thursday’s Foodcycle Cook and Collect, and The Magic Hat Cafe, a pay how you feel community cafe. 3. FOOD NATION Food nation is a social enterprise aiming to inspire people about good food, provide cooking classes, work with schools and partner with local restaurants. 4. ASPIRE BYKER Aspire Byker is a community cafe with meals as cheap as £1 per adult and 50p per child.

THE HIGH STREET

Food Offerings

Charity and Betting Shops

Empty Units

Independant Stores

ACUPUNCTURE APPROACH

MASTERPLAN

See pages 158 - 163 for more detail

HIGH STREET EVOLUTION

PHASE 1 0 - 1 years

PHASE 2 1 - 5 years

PHASE 3 5 - 10 years

CULINARY SCHOOL SITE LOCATION

CULINARY SCHOOL SITE ANALYSIS

EXISTING SITE CONDITIONS

PEDESTRIANISATION AND DEMOLITION

CULINARY SCHOOL USERS

WIDER CONNECTIONS

GREENHOUSE PRECEDENT

WORKING KITCHEN PRECEDENT

Visual connection between retaurant and restaurant kitchen

OKNI - London

Cafe and restaurant run by New City College on their Hackney campus. Provides catering students with the experience of operating in a working kitchen alongside professional chefs

CULINARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME

HIGH STREET RELATIONSHIP

ITERATION 1

Maintaining building front continuity along the high street Main entrance directly off high street

ITERATION 2

Partial building front continuity along the high street while massing running parallel with adjacent building Main entrance slightly receded from high street

ITERATION 3

Partial building front continuity along the high street, central courtyard creation Main entrance accessed from courtyard - courtyard becomes hub of activity

MATERIALITY COLLAGE

Timber greenhouse structure on roof a.

Timber cladding with solar shading where necessary for first and second floor exterior Bismarck House by Andrew Burges Architects

Brick reclaimed from demolition of existing building used for ground floor exterior d.

Roughly 11,150 available

a. b. c. d. e.

Bridge House by LLAMA urban design Junshan Cultural Center by Neri&Hu Design and Research OOice House in Cambridge by Nilsson Pflugfelder Dublin House by A2 Architects Education Centre Nyanza by Dominikus Stark Architekten

Brick used on ground floor also incorporated into exterior herb garden and seating area

Art Studio by Erskineville Studio 67

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

MASSING 1 Testing the expression of the greenhouses in the front facade

MASSING 2

Brick wall wrapping around site, entrance recessed from high street

MASSING 3

Greater integration of site slope, central core with services and circulation

MASSING 4 Central core for circulation, raised events space

STRUCTURAL STRATEGY

COMMUNITY HERB GARDEN

Fragranced herbs

Textured use of reclaimed brick

Seating incorporated into planters

COURTYARD DESIGN Exterior events space and outdoor restaurant seating. Raised to maximise sunlit hours

Community herb garden

MINT

Partial shade Can be invasive, best to plant separately Harvested between April–Sept

HESSLE PEAR TREE

Light shade Threatened native North of England variety Harvested October

CHIVES

Light shade / Full sun Harvested between May–Oct

COURTYARD: FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

CONTEXTUAL VIEWS

HIGH STREET CONNECTION

VENTILATION STRATEGY

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

Absalon, Copenhagen

Inviting, community dinning experience

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

THIRD FLOOR AND ROOF PLAN

EVENING OCCUPATION 92

APPENDIX THESIS OUTLINE

Material Flows - Physical imprint of commodities exchange, Venice Biennale, 2018

Cities are giant resource absorbers, demanding a constant stream of inputs sourced globally through complex supply chains. One such input, which this thesis will focus on, is food. Of the 4.3 billion tonnes of food produced globally a year for human consumption, 67% is destined for cities.¹ With urbanisation an increasing global trend, cities are set to consume 80% of all food produced by 2050.² As this consumption increases so does the disconnect between food producer and food consumer. These layers of separation result in the consequences and intensity of global food production to be invisible when selecting food from a supermarket shelf.

“FOOD ARRIVES ON OUR PLATES AS IF BY MAGIC, AND WE RARELY STOP TO WONDER HOW IT GOT THERE”³

¹ Cities And Circular Economy For Food (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2019), p. 17 <http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/publications>. ² Ibid., p. 24. ³ Carolyn Steel, Hungry City (London: Vintage Books, 2009), p. ix.

HEALTH COSTS

Globally, obesity is killing three times as many people as malnutrition.⁴

Low-quality diets cause micro-nutrient deficiencies and contribute to a substantial rise in the incidence of diet-related obesity and diet-related diseases, including coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

The NHS spent £6.1 billion on overweight and obesity related ill-health in 2014 to 2015, this is projected to reach £9.7 billion by 2050.⁵

For every £1 spent on food in the UK, an additional hidden cost of 37.4p is spent on diet-related diseases.⁶

BILLIONS OF TONNES ANNUALLY fresh water fertilisers + pesticides fossil energy

2.9

4.3

food destined for cities

food for human consumption

7.1

1.4

production for food globally

food destined for outside cities

1.1

soil

2.4

food eaten in cities

0.5 wasted in cities

2.3

human waste in cities

production and processing losses

A LINEAR FOOD SYSTEM When looking at the volumes present in the global food system, from production to consumption it highlights the amount that is wasted in the process, around 1.6 billion tonnes or 22%. This, along with the lack of nutrient looping, means there is a continuous high-level reliance on inputs, from water to fertilisers and the result is many of the consequences mentioned above. Cities, as the largest consumers of food, can therefore play a leading role in enacting change or deviance from the prevailing linearity of the status quo. To be more sustainable, a reduction in reliance on inputs alongside limiting the wastage during processing is vital.

1.7

2.8

animal feed and other uses

100 *data source, Cities and the Circular economy for food, The Ellen Macarthur Foundation

organic waste in cities

>2%

of valuable nutrients looped by cities

⁴ The Lancet, “GBD 2017: A Fragile World”, The Lancet, 392.10159 (2018), 1683 <https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(18)32858-7>. ⁵ ”Health Matters: Obesity And The Food Environment”, GOV.UK, 2017 <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-obesity-and-thefood-environment/health-matters-obesity-and-the-food-environment--2#national-policies-to-tackle-obesity> [Accessed 10 November 2020]. ⁶ Ian Fitzpatrick, Richard Young and Robert Barbour, The Hidden Cost Of UK Food (Sustainable Food Trust, 2017), pp. 8, 9.

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FOOD WASTE COLLECTION

Another linear aspect of the food system is the collection or non-collection of organic waste, of which England performs the worst in the UK with only 45% of households having food waste collection. By collecting food waste with other waste, you reduce the potential of that resource. For example, in Newcastle food waste is collected with general household waste. This is taken to the Mechanical Biological Treatment Facility in Byker, where the organic waste is separated out using shredders and a trommel. This waste is then transported to an InVessel composting site in Northumberland. Although this sounds positive, the Byker MBT facility recovery

rate of organic waste is very low, and the facility has been described as “never yet achieving even its minimal performance targets and it has been heavily and consistently criticised in every independent report on it that the council has commissioned.”⁷ Additionally, the composting site in Northumberland only produces lowgrade compost with limited uses, such as land restoration of industrial sites.

Percentage of households with separate food waste collection

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⁷ “Aiming For Zero Waste”, <https://www.ukwin.org.uk/files/pdf/zero1.pdf> [Accessed 30 December 2020], p.21.

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THE EVOLUTION OF FOOD SUPPLY NETWORKS

1880

Medieval

5km ~ 3miles

2020

Regional Airport

Somerset and Dorset Line (1862-1966)

Cheddar Valley Line (1861 - 1951)

Regional Port

1km

10000km

1000km

100km

10km

10km <1% imported food is aifreighted

road road

rail rail

sea sea

air air

*infographic produced by Margaret Longman

Food has not always been so globally sourced, for the average British settlement in medieval times, food would not ordinarily travel more than 10 km from farm to market.⁸ This distance enabled farmers to get to and return from the market in one day. With the advent of the railways in the 1800s, food could travel further, both regionally and nationally. In the 20th Century supply chains went global. 55% food consumed in the UK is produced here, transported from farm to hub to shop via LGV. 26% is produced in the EU and mostly travels via road. The remaining 19% travels thousands of kilometres via ship and air.⁹ Thus, there is a decrease in the connection between food producer and food consumer, as more steps are added in between.

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⁸ Neil A Powe, Trevor Hart and Tim Shaw, Market Towns, 1st edn (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 157. ⁹ John Porter, “How Reliant Is The UK On Imported Food”, The Caterer, 2010 <https://www.thecaterer.com/news/foodservice/how-reliant-is-the-uk-onimported-food?fbclid=IwAR3460iq4-6QnWA9JQ9zOeYJcagVTpF9-Y51PholYxo-XsCxMy8UhzuIBiM> [Accessed 2 January 2021].

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¹⁰ William Parson and William White, History, Directory, And Gazetteer, Of The Counties Of Durham And Northumberland (Newcastle: Printed for W. White & Co. by E. Baines and Son, 1827), p. c.

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Vendors unloading their wares from baskets and carts Green Market c.1884 Newgate Street, Newcastle upon Tyne

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To investigate the source of produce today for stalls in Grainger Market, I reviewed the origin of the fruit and vegetables sold as Hector Hall, a greengrocer located there. The most common source was from outside Europe, with one of the stall workers explaining to me that due to the high number of Chinese clients, they have started to cater to this, selling fruit such as Pomelos, a citrus fruit native to south-east Asia. Food coming from these destinations are predominantly transported via cargo ships, which can take near to a month to arrive. Due to this length of time, highly perishable produce, such as fresh herbs and green beans, are transported by air. However, this mode of transport is only used where necessary, as airfreight is 5x more expensive than shipping. Produce originating from inside Europe is transported via road in temperature-controlled HGVs. Only 24% of the produce on offer originated from the UK, however this percentage increases in summer (information gathered in October 2020) but it is very close to the national figure of 23% of

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fruit and veg grown and consumed in the UK.¹¹ When inquiring into which suppliers Hector Hall uses, I discovered that they obtain the entirety of their produce from the North East Wholesale Fruit and Veg Market in Gateshead, 3.5 miles away. This market supplies many businesses in Newcastle from restaurants to schools and is itself supplied by just under 20 different wholesalers in specialisms from potatoes to flowers. Furthermore, I found it interesting that the fruit and veg available at the wholesale market is the surplus from farm contracts with supermarkets. Therefore, essentially the same produce bought at Hector Hall could also be found in the Tesco over the road. This questions the reasoning for choosing to shop at the local greengrocer compared to a supermarket if the product is the same, maybe Greengrocers can offer a much more personal experience as well as a different spatial feel to supermarkets.

¹¹ Tom Bawden, “How The UK Could Become Self Sufficient In Fruit And Veg”, Inews.Co.Uk, 2020 <https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/how-the-ukcould-become-self-sufficient-in-fruit-and-veg-294060> [Accessed 28 October 2021].

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SUPERMARKET DOMINANCE

Even when looking at a produce imagined as very British, such as apples, you can see in the infographic above, most apples originate outside of the country and supermarkets are the largest seller. The supermarkets’ market share of food retail has dramatically increased since the 1970s, from 10% to 83% today.¹² This dominance is also prevalent throughout the food supply system and allows them to wield a lot of power when dealing with food producers. Many British farms have had to either increase in size or cease to operate, to be able to supply produce in high quantities and low profit margins that the supermarkets require.

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¹² Joanna Blythman, Shopped (London: Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 4.

*infographic produced by Margaret Longman

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THE DISTRIBUTION NETWORK FOR MORRISONS’ CARROTS With supermarkets operating at such large scales, for them it makes financial sense to have a national packing and distribution hubs for their produce. This means that a carrot grown in the Scottish Boarders could have to travel down to the Midlands to be sorted, back up to the North East regional distribution hub before arriving for sale at a supermarket in Newcastle. This is what happens to the carrots grown for Morrisons by their carrot supplier, Strawsons Ltd. Meanwhile there are at least four farms I located growing carrots in a 40km radius of Newcastle. The process of centralising then regionally distributing is the norm for supermarket produce, with Aldi directing all their UK grown apples to one processing and packaging plant in Kent.

Aldi’s Kent apple processing plant

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Looking more closely at the type of crops already growing around Newcastle, on the land directly surrounding the city, there is plenty of arable farming with the growing of oats, barley, and wheat. Further out, and the light

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green colour on the map below is land used for grazing livestock. Typically, in England more crops are grown in the east on flatter land while hillier land in the west is used for livestock.

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THE VON THUNEN MODEL This type of land use, with crops grown closer to the city centre and livestock land further out is reflected in the Von Thunen model. This model was created by the 19th century Economist diagramming methods of maximising agriculture production around the city and concentric zones, balancing land costs with transportation costs. In

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN AN ISOLATED STATE

his model directly surrounding the city centre you have a market gardens, benefiting from organic waste from the city. Outside of that, there is firewood production and crop farming of different types, then livestock farming. These zones then adapt to local conditions such as a river, as this would enable quicker transport in the 1800s. The diagram for Newcastle today shows that the modern-day city has lost the market gardening centre and an urban expansion along the river, although the bands of crop farming then livestock farming are still visible.

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AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN AN ISOLATED STATE WITH MODIFIED CONDITIONS

NEWCASTLE

central city market gardening ﬁrewood and lumber production crop farming without fallow crop farming, fallow and pasture three-ﬁeld system livestock farming river or sea

cent market gar ﬁrewood and lumber prod crop farming without crop farming, fallow and p three-ﬁeld 119 s livestock fa river

THE AGRICULTURE 2020 ACT The Agriculture Act 2020 marks a major change in the way subsidies are given to farmers. It lays out a shift from subsidies based on the amount of land farmed, to new payments which will be based on providing public goods. The scheme will be divided into three tiers. Tier 1, the core tier, will be open to all farm types, encouraging environmental resilience grounded in sustainable practices. Tier 2, the collaborative tier, is about encouraging farmers to work together to provide greater public benefits, such as natural flood management. Tier 3 covers more complex changes, including large-scale creation of habitat of forest. However, there is criticism that this bill lacks detail and urgency. As rural farms are increasingly being asked to perform other functions on top of food production, it makes it all the more necessary for urban areas to start producing more of their own food, to relieving some of the pressure from rural farms.

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A CIRCULAR ECONOMY FOR FOOD A growing school of thought is advocating for a shift to a circular economy, where resources are looped in continual use, with the end goal of eliminating waste. In relation to food, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation,

a charity which aims to inspire a positive future through the framework of a circular economy, has come up with three ambitions cities should work towards in order to create a circular economy for food.

*infographic by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, edited by author

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The Ellen MacArthur report also identifies key stakeholders andSTAKEHOLDERS their roleECONOMY in implementing a MACARTHUR circular CITIES AND CIRCULAR FOR FOOD • 57 • ELLEN FIGURE 10: ALL HAVE A ROLE TO PLAYFOUNDATION IN BUILDING A food economy. CIRCULAR ECONOMY FOR FOOD IN CITIES. Mobilising the three ambitions will require contributions from all the main urban food system actors, working together in a collaborative way. The following table describes a few examples of actions diverse food system stakeholders can take.

ACTORS

ROLE

FOOD PRODUCERS

• Use available tools and technologies to help shift to regenerative practices for growing food and measure the impacts • (Peri-urban farmers) Connect with local consumer markets and use organic fertilisers made from urban food by-product streams • Take advantage of educational and funding programmes that support the adoption of regenerative practices

FOOD BRANDS

RETAILERS AND COMMODITIES/FOOD BUYERS AND TRADERS

RESTAURANTS, AND OTHER FOOD PROVIDERS

WASTE MANAGEMENT COMPANIES

CITY GOVERNMENTS

LEARNING INSTITUTIONS

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

• • • • •

Redesign food products that: Use innovative plant-based protein in place of animal protein Use food processing by-products as ingredients Are safe to cycle Use marketing influence to increase popularity of circular products

• Prioritise sourcing products produced regeneratively, and locally where appropriate • Preferentially market, price, and promote regeneratively grown products • Prevent edible food waste through improved logistics, matching food volumes to demand, redistribution, using ‘ugly’ produce as ingredients, etc.

• Redesign food products so they: • Use by-products as ingredients • Use innovative plant-based protein in place of animal protein • Generate by-products that are safe to cycle • Create seasonal product offerings that use locally-grown ingredients • Use by-products from making one product as ingredients for new products • Innovate for advanced organic waste collection and treatment systems • Reconnect urban nutrient flows with peri-urban farmers • Work with public and private sector players to develop valuable bioeconomy products made from their food by-products • Implement wastewater treatment systems that make the most of nutrients contained within urban human waste • Collaborate with regional/national governments to introduce programmes that provide educational and financial support for farmers to adopt regenerative practices • Shape public procurement policies to source food grown regeneratively, and locally where appropriate • Put in place infrastructure and policies for separate organic waste collection and wastewater treatment systems • Advance infrastructure to enable local food sourcing and the return of organic fertilisers to peri-urban farms • Provide incentives through policies and funding programmes for food businesses to take actions based on circular economy principles

• Integrate food as an important component of circular economy courses • Advance the research needed to further build the evidence for shifting to a circular food system • Partner with local organisations and government to establish innovation hubs to help find solutions to overcome the challenges to achieving the vision • Implement the three ambitions on campuses

• Provide financial tools to de-risk and stimulate the transition from conventional to regenerative food production • Steer capital towards businesses leading the shift towards a circular economy for food

*infographic by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

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¹³ “Restaurants: Taking Action On Waste”, Wrap.Org.Uk <http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Restaurants.pdf> [Accessed 30 December 2020].

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THESIS BRIEF Re-embedding local food systems: An outline for Byker In the past, the tie between food markets and food producers was restricted by distance, or more precisely, the time taken to travel that distance; the time it took farmers to get to and return from the local market could not exceed one day. Today, this restriction is insignificant however, arguably other pressures relating to the finite resources and pollution of our planet demand prioritising reconnecting to local supply chains again. In Giddens’ book, The Consequences of Modernity, he defines the word disembedding as “the ‘lifting out’ of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their reconstructing across indefinite spans of timespace”.¹⁴ This time-distance liberation is witnessed in the current food supply network, with the connection between local grower and consumer replaced by global food supply systems. However, Giddens also describes the notion of re-embedding, “the reappropriation or recasting of disembedded social relations so as to pin them down (however partially or transitorily) to local conditions of time and place”¹⁵. This idea of forming new local connections and community in response to global issues of food supply, offering instead nutritious, affordable, local food will drive my thesis in semester two. To help spatialise my thesis, I plan on referring to the framework for a circular economy for food. I will focus on Byker, a ward of Newcastle and will use the three ambitions laid out earlier to help develop a brief for Byker, analysing the relevant components to be implemented into the area.

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¹⁴ Anthony Giddens, The Consequences Of Modernity, 1st edn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), p. 21. ¹⁵ Ibid., p79.

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BYKER TENURE Byker is one of Newcastle’s 26 wards and is dominated by Byker Estate, a local authority housing development built in the 1970s. This replaced most of the Victorian slum terraced housing in the ward that was deemed unfit for human habitation. Around this, there is a patchwork of 1930s housing, built as the city expanded and 1980s redevelopment. The local high street is to the north of

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Byker Estate, separated by the A193. The ward is also home to a large trading estate located on land once used for a pottery works, a shipbuilding yard and engine works. Byker Estate is influential on the overall tenure of the ward, with a larger proportion of socially rented households than the Newcastle average.

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BYKER AMENITIES In terms of amenities, Byker has three primary schools, library, swimming pool, climbing and bouldering walls, post office and police station. The area also benefits from good road and Metro links into the city centre.

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BYKER DEMOGRAPHICS Statistically, Byker is the second most deprived ward in Newcastle.¹⁶ It performs poorly in most statistical analysis of the area, only matching the England average for the percentage of respondents that feel a sense of belonging to that area.

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¹⁶ Byker Ward, 2013 <https://www.wellbeingforlife.org.uk/sites/default/files/Know%20Your%20Community%20-%20Byker%20ward.pdf> [Accessed 20 November 2020].

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CURRENT FOOD INITIATIVES

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“BYKER’S SHIELDS ROAD NAMED WORST HIGH STREET IN BRITAIN”¹⁷ Byker’s High Street, Shields Road, has been voted the worst High Street in Britain for two years in a row by retail consultancy Harper Denis Hobbs. The reasoning behind this was the number of betting shops, charity shops, and empty units along the street. However, as the criteria for these rankings is used universally across the country, it will fail to encapsulate local peculiarities. Additionally, priorities for the retail consultancy will be different to the priorities of local users of the high street. However, it does demonstrate there is opportunity for intervention here.

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¹⁷ 2019 Retail Vitality Rankings, published by retail consultancy Harper Dennis Hobbs.

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THE DECLINING HIGH STREET Shields Road is not struggling in isolation, high streets are in decline countrywide, facing competition from online retail. This is compounded by rising business rates, declining real wages, stagnant growth, lack of infrastructure, such as parking issues and the prominence of out-of-town retail and superstores. These pressures force the question of how can high streets adapt to stay relevant?

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SHIELDS ROAD COMMERCIAL TYPOLOGY I decided to take a closer look at the make-up of Shields Road and found a wide range of services from pharmacies, to solicitors, to hairdressers and a lot of convenience stores.

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CHARITY SHOPS, PAWN BROKERS AND BOOKMAKERS

INDEPENDENT STORES

There was a prevalence of bookmakers (betting shops), pawn brokers and charity shops, but there were also many independent stores, potentially benefiting from lower business rates and rent as the unit sizes are small. 144

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CURRENT FOOD OFFERING

EMPTY UNITS

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In terms of food offering, a large supermarket, Morrisons, sits at one end of the street, with an Iceland at the other. There are a number of independent take-away’s, cafes and pubs, mainly concentrated at the top end of the street.

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PHYSICAL BARRIERS TO THE HIGH STREET I also wanted to capture the nature of the space, which feels enclosed by the central trainline to the north and the sunken A193 road to the south. The road down the high street itself is very busy with vehicular traffic, increasing the difficulty of moving around as a pedestrian. How different would this space feel if people were prioritised over cars?

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LOCATIONS OF OPPORTUNITY Through this mapping exercise I was aiming to highlight underutilised spaces in Byker to assist me in locating my programme in the next semester. Byker, particularly in and around Byker Estate, already has several parks and plenty of open green space, however some areas appeared less cared for, often situated next to a more thoughtfully landscaped area. These are the spaces I have highlighted as underutilised green space.

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PROGRAMME : A CIRCULAR FOOD HUB In terms of my programme, I would like to propose implementing a circular food hub into Byker, with different components which all interconnect and support each other. Elements such as the restaurant, culinary school and outreach classes would have more of a high street presence, whereas the organic food recycling centre would perhaps be located in Byker’s trading estate. The outreach classes would be the most community facing aspect of the scheme, running classes such as how to grow your own fruit and veg and cooking cheap, healthy meals.

Produce source food Ploroc daullcye source food loc ally

HIGH STREET PRESENCE HIGH STREET PRESENCE

aste Organic w nutrient opinagste Orgalonic w nutrient looping

RESTAURANT AND WASTE CAFE RESTAURANT AND WASTE CAFE

ORGANIC WASTE RECYCLING CENTRE

Skills encourage seasonal consumption Skills encourage seasonal consumption

OUTREACH CLASSES

n vatio Culti on necti recon fiooond itvhat Cuwlt on necti n o c e r food with Inn ova tion Inn ova tion

O reg rgan ene ic fe nu rati rtili tri O ve se reg entrgloan farm r i en opc f in nu erati inegrtilig trie ve s nt farm er loo pin ing g

OUTREACH CLASSES

CULINARY SCHOOL

Stud ents ents

FOOD GROWN IN BYKER

Produce source foodP loc roduaclley source food loc ally

CULINARY SCHOOL

Stud

FOOD GROWN IN BYKER

ORGANIC WASTE RECYCLING CENTRE

Innovation making the most of by-products Innovation design andthe market making most plant based foods of by-products design and market plant based foods Innovation

FOOD RESEARCH LAB FOOD RESEARCH LAB

designing with the whole life cycle in mind Innovation designing with the whole life cycle in mind

Source food grown regeneratively, and locally where appropriate Make the most of food Sourceand food grownhealthier regeneratively, and locally where appropriate Design market food products Make the most of food

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Design and market healthier food products

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LOOKING FORWARD By locating most of the programme on the high street, it could change the function from one of consumerism to one based around food and connection through food. Furthermore an acupuncture approach to development would enable the revitalisation of the area whilst maintaining its character.

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APPENDIX FURTHER DESIGN WORK

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MASTERPLAN DEVELOPMENT

Potential sites for allotments are located throughout Byker. The sites will contain 10 full allotment plots with an additional social area and shared tools shed. Some of the full plots will be split into half and quarter sized plots to suit a range of lifestyles. Furthermore, 2 of the 10 plots will consist of raised beds for less abled persons.

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The exhibition space will be located in an empty unit on the high street. It will inform and accustomise the public to hydroponic and aquaponic systems that will later be rolled out across Byker.

The research centre will be set up to design a suitable prototype for rooftop cultivation in the area. The centre will be linked with one of the nearby universities

Once designed, the research centre will manage the rollout of rooftop cultivation in Byker.

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The school program will work in the three local schools in Byker, teaching children how to cultivate their own food. By working with young children it can cement skills which can be used for the rest of their lives. Additionally, each school will have a planter along the high street where children can see the progress of other schools as well as making the scheme visible to the public.

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The culinary school will aim to tackle the lower level of qualifications in the area while also promoting locally grown food.

The culinary school will also support people interested in starting up their own restaurant through management courses and access to grants.

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The outreach classes will provide a main point of contact with the community. Through these classes, residents will be informed about the other schemes in the area, in addition to the cultivating and cooking classes.

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The waste cafe will collect unwanted food from local businesses and use it to provide cheap meals to the community. The cafe can be quickly and easily set up in one of the vacant properties along the high street.

The food market will enable the selling of local produce and prepared food, drawing people weekly from around the city.

An organic waste recycling centre is proposed to replace Byker’s current under-performing Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) facility. It will produce bio fuel and high quality compost.

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CULINARY SCHOOL: PROGRESS SECTION

Sketched out near final review stage, through this drawing I re-evaluated the positioning of the restaurant. Although designed so that diners could look down into the restaurant kitchen, this wouldn’t be as successful, in terms of a visual connection, as having both on the same level. Furthermore, by making this change it will enable a more striking double height restaurant space.

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CULINARY SCHOOL: PROGRESS ELEVATION

Elevation exploring relationship to neighbouring buildings, with window openings referencing them.

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CLT PROPERTIES

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FOOD MARKET: SITE

Following the master-planning stage, I began developing two of the components (the food market and the culinary school) in more detail. However, after initial development of the food market, the decision was taken to focus only on one component - the culinary school. This site was chosen for the food market as it provides a large, underutilised space adjacent to the High Street.

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MARKET PRECEDENTS

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MARKET USERS

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MARKET DESIGN DEVELPMENT The market stalls would be positioned so as to draw people into the space off the high street, with seating beyond.

Choose Consume Discard

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BIBLIOGRAPHY “Aiming For Zero Waste”, Ukwin.Org.Uk <https:// www.ukwin.org.uk/files/pdf/zero1.pdf> [Accessed 30 December 2020] Bawden, Tom, “How The UK Could Become Self Sufficient In Fruit And Veg”,  Inews.Co.Uk, 2020 <https://inews. co.uk/news/environment/how-the-uk-could-becomeself-sufficient-in-fruit-and-veg-294060> [Accessed 28 October 2021] Blythman, Joanna, Shopped (London: Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 4 Byker Ward, 2013 <https://www.wellbeingforlife.org.uk/ sites/default/files/Know%20Your%20Community%20 -%20Byker%20ward.pdf> [Accessed 20 November 2020]

Steel, Carolyn,  Hungry City  (London: Vintage Books, 2009) Steel, Carolyn, Sitopia, 1st edn (London: Penguin Random House, 2020) The Amsterdam Circular 2020-2025 Strategy  (City of Amsterdam, 2020) <https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/ policy/sustainability/circular-economy/> The Lancet, “GBD 2017: A Fragile World”, The Lancet, 392 (2018), 1683 <https://doi.org/10.1016/s01406736(18)32858-7>

Cities And Circular Economy For Food  (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2019), <http://www. ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/publications> [Accessed 11 January 2021] Corner, James, and Alison Bick Hirsch, The Landscape Imagination  (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014) Fitzpatrick, Ian, Richard Young, and Robert Barbour, The Hidden Cost Of UK Food (Sustainable Food Trust, 2017), pp. 8, 9 Giddens, Anthony, The Consequences Of Modernity, 1st edn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015) “Health Matters: Obesity And The Food Environment”, GOV.UK, 2017 <https://www.gov.uk/government/ publications/health-matters-obesity-and-the-foodenvironment/health-matters-obesity-and-the-foodenvironment--2#national-policies-to-tackle-obesity> [Accessed 10 November 2020] House of Commons Library, The Agriculture Act 2020, 3 December 2020 Parson, William, and William White, History, Directory, And Gazetteer, Of The Counties Of Durham And Northumberland (Newcastle: Printed for W. White & Co. by E. Baines and Son, 1827) Powe, Neil A, Trevor Hart, and Tim Shaw, Market Towns, 1st edn (London: Routledge, 2014) “Restaurants: Taking Action On Waste”,  Wrap.Org. U k   < h t t p : / / w w w. w r a p. o r g . u k / s i t e s / f i l e s / w r a p / Restaurants.pdf> [Accessed 30 December 2020] 178

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