ATLANTIS MAGAZINE FOR URBANISM & LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
#28.1 October 2017
ACTION • REACTION EUROPE AND AFRICA
feeding cities
The supply of food to a great city is among the most remarkable of social phenomena - full of instruction on all sides.
-George Dodd
(Steel, 2013)
by Selina Abraham MSc Urbanism TU Delft
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What does a pop-up restaurant have to with urbanism?
One such restaurant in Almere has opened this inquiry questioning the relation of food and the city. But indeed, what does food have to do with our profession? This is the ignorant and blissful bubble that we all live in. The struggle to supply our modern-day cities with food is an invisible one. In the pre-industrial city, this struggle manifested itself prominently and profoundly, with streets and roads packed with carts and wagons, docksides lined with cargo ships and fishing boats, streets and backyards home to cows and pigs. Its visible presence “once caused chaos, but it was necessary chaos”. Before the onset of railways, food supply was the biggest concern most cities had to deal with, and the struggle was very real and visible. Urban authorities were reliant on the countryside to feed them, but did all in their power to retain its upper hand. Taxes were levied, lands reformed, deals undertaken, propaganda issued and wars waged towards the sustenance of the city. The threat of starvation was never subtle (Steel, 2013, p. 6-7). By making food cheap, plentiful, and convenient, the modern food industry has inadvertently set up blinds around itself, concealing its own complexity and importance. Our mental image of the contemporary city often ignores the rural hinterland that sustains it. The ability to store and transport food over massive distances, has freed the city of its immediate farm belt, making way for an invisible global hinterland. The modern day city is just as reliant on the food industry that supplies us as our historic counterpart. Arguably, more so than ever before with the current rate of urban expansion (Steel, 2013, p. 7). The rose-coloured glasses through which we see our food sets a dangerous precedent for the future. Cities todays are consuming an estimated 75 percent of the world’s energy and food resources, at some point the balance sheets will stop adding up (Steel, 2013). With more than 50% of the world population residing in urban areas and a projection of two-thirds by 2050 (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2015), cities can no longer be studied as autonomous entities. But instead as a symbiotic entity intertwined with the countryside. The failure to do so will have global consequences.
Developing countries like India and China are following dangerously in the footsteps of the consumerist culture that the West portrays. In India, urban development has come at the high cost of agricultural growth, forcing its dependency on imports. In 2016, India made its first purchase of corn in 16 years as reported by Reuters (Bhardwaj, 2016). Similarly China is struggling to feed its increasing urban population and has become the world’s largest importer of grain and soya (Steel, 2013). Land rich countries like Brazil and Argentina have benefitted economically from this move, but at what cost? Brazil’s ambitions to meet export demands has pushed soya farmers into encroaching the Amazon forest (Branford & Torres, 2017). The ambiguous nature of the global food industry has drastic but invisible consequences. Feeding the Netherlands The poly-centric urban structure of the Netherlands makes it uniquely and visibly more intertwined with it rural counterpart. Historically, “country and city were linked by a closed system of canals, which carried waste from the towns to the farms and brought back food in the opposite direction”. And today, despite its small size, the country is the second largest exporter of food after the United States in terms of monetary value. Though most of the food is not grown in the Netherlands, it is imported, processed and exported again. It is a quiet agricultural superpower, tucked away in a dense urban network (PBL, n.d.). Hence, the discourse on the flows of food has never taken a back seat. The circular flows of food as a key step towards selfsustenance is now a prominent theme in contemporary discourse. Optimising the flows of food requires drastic changes in production chains like improving resource management, optimum use of food and reusing residue streams for biomass (Rood, Muilwijk, & Westhoek, 2017). Feeding Almere The pop-up restaurant in Almere is one such project researching the consumer perspective on the flows of food. The project seeks to understand food, how it is experienced and people's behaviour patterns with respect to its consumption and usage. It is an initiative from Veldacademie Flevocampus for Flevo Campus, on food related developments in Almere, together with Echnaton and the Aeres MBO. The AMS Institute (2017) describes food as an aspect that affects all parts of society; making it a challenging and dynamic theme. It “is intertwined with various urban
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issues and can potentially contribute to citizens’ health, stimulate social cohesion, strive to produce less waste, close cycles of raw materials, make transport flows more efficient, or seek to boost employment” (AMS Institute, 2017). Every other week at the restaurant explores a theme. Visitors to the restaurant - run by students of Food & Lifestyle of Aeres MBO in Almere - contribute to the research, by answering questions about food consumption patterns and are informed about food processes as they eat. Partners from the food sector use the data to improve their activities and understand consumers behavior. One example of themes addressed is food waste. Our inability to accurately judge the right amount of food to cook and throwing out food because we fail to notice the use by date, leads to large amounts of perfectly edible food being thrown out. The theme partner Buitengewoon Almere, a coalition that tackles surplus food discarded by supermarkets to feed poor families in Almere, uses the restaurant to create awareness amongst local residents. The restaurant is one step towards addressing our disconnected urban food culture. • This article was written with inputs from Lisa ten Brug, from the Veldacademie.
References AMS Institute. (2017, January 12). The Feeding City. Retrieved 19 September 2017, from http://www.amsinstitute.org/solution/the-feeding-city/ Bhardwaj, M. (2016, February 1). Food imports rise as Modi struggles to revive rural India. Reuters. Retrieved from http://in.reuters.com/article/india-farming/ food-imports-rise-as-modi-struggles-to-revive-rural-indiaidINKCN0VA3NL Branford, S., & Torres, M. (2017, February 8). Soy invasion poses imminent threat to Amazon, say agricultural experts. Retrieved 19 September 2017, from https://news. mongabay.com/2017/02/soy-invasion-poses-imminentthreat-to-amazon-say-agricultural-experts/ PBL. (n.d.). The Netherlands in 21 infographics - Facts and Figures on the Human Environment. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Rood, T., Muilwijk, H., & Westhoek, H. (2017). Food for the Circular Economy (Policy Brief No. 2878). The Hague: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Steel, C. (2013). Hungry city: how food shapes our lives. London: Vintage. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2015). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision (No. (ST/ESA/ SER.A/366)).
Title Image - The city and countryside - a symbiotic entity interwined with each other. Source - Author (2017)
LET'S TALK ABOUT PUBLIC PARTICIPAT “…getting individual opinion is one thing, but a collective community opinion is nearly impossible…” Vincent Nadin, Professor of Spatial Planning – Department of Urbanism at a panel discussion during the Urban Thinkers Campus, June 2017
interviews by
Selina Abraham MSc Urbanism TU Delft
with
Nelson Mota
Faculty of Architecture TU Delft
Otto Trienekens Urbanist, Architect Veldacademie
Machiel van Dorst
Section Chairman OTB - Research for the built environment, TU Delft
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atlantis I recently had the opportunity to work on a community engagement research project in Rotterdam Zuid. Rotterdam Zuid is home to Zuidplein, fondly known as the “Heart” of the South or Hart van Zuid. However, the name Zuidplein holds a lot of ambiguity. It is the name of an area, more so than a square (plein translates to “square” in Dutch). While there is a plaza within extents of Zuidplein, it does not seem to be a significant feature of the “heart”. Instead Zuidplein primarily refers to one of the largest malls in the Netherlands, the Zuidplein Winkelcentrum. My role involved co-coordinating the project with a colleague collecting data, from the local inhabits as a part of an enquiry into the use and appreciation of public space. The project, a reboot of a 2011 research, used surrogate researchers – 50 local MBO students – to collect data. Partners for the project included the Techniek College Rotterdam with consortium Hart van Zuid-Ballast Nedam\Heijmans. The research question that the project addresses, is: How is the public space around the shopping center, Zuidplein, perceived by both pedestrians and cyclists from the surrounding neighbourhoods?
TION
However, over the course of the project, I was plagued with existentialesque questions on the tenets of public participation. Conversation with my professional peers about the project, either opened enthusiastic praise for public participation or suspicion and mild disdain for public involvement. So, I set out on my own parallel investigation into what public participation meant for an urban development such as the Hart van Zuid, which resulted in some insightful conversations with relevant academicians and professionals. Let’s back up a bit. Public participation in planning isn’t new. It developed in the late 1950’s as a product of public hostility towards the profession. In the next two decades seminal works like the crowd favourite, The Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs and After the Planners by Robert Goodman denounced conventional planning and associated bureaucratic processes. Urban planning and architecture practices that were rooted in the “paternalistic creation and management” of the built environment by experts were
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put under the scanner (Sanoff 2000). This resulted in the need for public to be more involved, rather than just informed at different stages of development. So, the importance of public participation in the creation of the built environment is not in dispute here. But, we do have to consider the possibility of un-informed public and the mythical entity that is public consensus. Extending my enquiry to three experts on the matter, I approached Nelson Mota, Machiel van Dorst and Otto Trienekens armed with a barrage of questions. Published below is some of the most insightful results of my communications. The three interviews were undertaken independently in an unstructured format. The following are extracts from the paraphrased transcripts.
SA: Does public participation become a bit counterproductive to the design process? Are undermining our own body of knowledge and skillsets in imagining the possibilities of a space? Are we disrupting the possibilities of design and innovation in our field? Machiel van Dorst (MvD): While working in science, we don’t create answers. To develop knowledge, we collect data. And as urbanists it is important to understand that there is more knowledge outside the building than inside the building. So, a lot of laymen, or people in practice have knowledge on aspects that we don’t have and it is important to harvest that. And there are different forms of public participation. Some of them really intervene with people and let them co-design a solution, while
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some participatory practices are about harvesting data. Both ways are interesting; they serve different purposes. When we harvest data in the field, we get closer to the real problems, that we may not perceive as scientists. Additionally, as an urbanist, you are a scientist and a designer. In the field work, amongst all this data, there is inspiration. You may hear or see things that may belong in a desirable future. And when something is desirable and not realistic, there is an opportunity to design. So [public participation] can be a very creative process, or a real research process. Nelson Mota (NM): Sometimes participation is used and abused as it is instrumental means to get consensus, but at times the result is an artificial consensus. And it is used sometimes by politicians, real-estate developers and housing agencies, or similar bodies to mitigate some possible tensions that could (for example) have come about during the development of the process. You invite people to have their say, while documenting the process and it results in people feeling like they are being heard and that their wishes are being accommodated. But it is not like participation at all. The most interesting cases of citizen participation is when the designer or the expert is not there to just translate what the people want in to some 1. Zuidplein Winkelcentrum. Source - Author (2016) 2-3. Student from Techniek College in Rotterdam as surrogate researchers for the Hart van Zuid - Use and Appreciation of Public Space project. Source (Ten Brug, et al, 2017)
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sort of drawing or plan and the other way around, the people are not there to tell the designer what they should do. There should be reciprocal discussion, and everybody in the end will profit from this discussion. Real participation always includes two fundamental components. One of them is conflict. You cannot avoid conflicts. If there are no conflicts, something is wrong. The second component, which derives from the first, is negotiation. Negotiation is essential. If the architect just does what the people want or if the people just accept what the architect wants, there is something wrong. Negotiating is about understanding each other. In my mind, it is part and parcel of real citizen participation in design decision making. Otto Trienekens (OT): In co-creative and development processes, a lot of people get together to make a compromise. But in doing this, you evoke ownership in a project. The outcome of a cocreative process may not necessarily be different from an independent design process. Hypothetically, you may have the same outcome but without ownership. Sometimes, designers intuitively develop a good design, but the community may not be ready for it. Co-creative processes take time, and this sometimes evokes conflict. SA: While teasing conflict, getting public consensus is not always easy. When public opinion is contradictory, how do you get consensus to move forward for a project? NM: That’s what I call the “re-coding” process. That’s where I believe that
expertise is valuable, because getting this input from individuals is important, but it needs to be processed and not just passively collected. It is important to create a context, where everyone is talking about the same thing. For example, you could ask me about the park in two completely different ways. One way would be, “Do you like the park in your neighbourhood?”. The answer may be yes. But if the question was more specific, like, “Do you like to take a stroll or walk at night?”, the answer may be no. Answers may vary based on safety or cleanliness. But as a politician or a developer, you could instrumental-ise the answers to your own benefit. So communication should be made very effective, and we must not use and manipulate people, which is the worst possible outcome of people’s participatory processes.
MvD: There are different things there. First, what is a community? Is there such a thing as community? If we skip it and look at public space, we see that we have different users, there are groups of users and we can look at their behaviour from the perspective or specific groups and see how we can facilitate them in the built environment. And when we design something, it is the awareness that we facilitate different groups or different individuals even.
The other thing that we should be aware of is choosing a meaningful social group that would like to get involved with, in this discussion. So that while processing the results of this negotiated consensus, it is from the perspective of the whole group and not just the individual. Because eventually there will always be conflicting interests. A sum of one hundred individual interests, do not make the collective consensus of the community.
MvD: Of course, that is the difference between the roles of you as an expert and knowing how people might interpret the built environment. But, there is a positive and negative side to this. Indeed, people might like the Zuidplein, because they don’t know the alternative. That might be negative because they are really limited in their view on good solutions. It is also positive, because they like it. I will give you an example there, because it sounds like “… let’s keep the crowd stupid”. For example, what is the quality of my house? It is what it is, but it also related to the qualities of the house I used to have, and the house I want to have. And those two extremes are related to my own experience. So, we can educate people, and when I see all the possibilities of how my house could be, then I might appreciate my house less. So that is
OT: First of all, you have to be aware that individual interest is seldom the same as community interest. For this kind of process, we have to communicate clearly to the public and the participants. Together, we have to work towards collective interest. While individual interest is important, in the end it is about the collective.
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SA: While people gave a positive rating to the area, closer inspection of the comments showed that it was perhaps because they had lived there all their lives and not a true testament to the spatial quality. How does this affect the overall research?
atlantis the tricky part. We have practical examples, we have row houses where people may give a rating of 7, but the neighbour adds an extension and I see that its possible and I become unhappy even though nothing has changed. OT: People are very attached to their habits and static situations. Most people dislike change, their common environment is what they are used to. As a researcher, we have to be aware of this risk. It also gives way to follow up questions, such as, “Why don’t you like this change?”, therefore evoking deeper questions. At the same time, we have to understand that a lot of the change that we propose as professional is projection and really not accepted or wanted by people who live in an area. It is not a black and white situation. SA: And what do you think of the overall research project? OT: I think it has developed in a very interesting way. We started a couple years ago as a research project that has become a development project. The way we do the research now, we see the social effects directly on the students. There is a return on social investment. It is no longer a research for the sake of research, but social return and talent development. We are evoking conscience in younger people for the environment around them. It also evokes the notion that the individual can influence the way public space is maintained, programmed and how people behave. It is a very important move towards more inclusive public space. MvD: Of course, I was a part of the original research report (in 2011). I appreciated that part of the same methodology was used. And it is great to have much more data, with this bigger group of field workers. But it means that this multi-method approach is more important in our field. It is complex, there are different views and we are all biased. And the great thing is that, the report I made a few years ago, some of its methods are still here. And that is so important, and we never do that in Urbanism, repeating the same research over and over. Because like you say, why does this person give all these answers? Like, “I’ve lived all my life here”, it is practical, and that is one reason, but there could be other reasons, there is so much complexity to this. I did a research in Eindhoven, when we asked people, “How do you like your house?”, the average grade was 7, but in a neighbouring area close by, we asked, “What does your partner think of your house?”, and the average grade was 5 to 5.5. People have a tendency to talk positively about the situation they are in. They like to say and think that they are
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doing okay. There are a lot of things that indicate bias in this sort of research. But we have to do it, to understand this complexity. Project Reflection In the case of Hart van Zuid, the project is unique that it uses students in the neighbourhood to undertake the research. The research not only had the means to engage with residents to evaluate and consider their surroundings, but also with the students acting as “surrogate researchers”. Towards the end of the project, the students reported that they had developed a sense of ownership for the spaces that they use. The ability to influence future generations of leaders and evoke community stewardship is a key aspect of this project, and a more powerful result than the numbers and statistics published in the actual research report. Conclusion To conclude, public participation is an extremely complex and nuanced process. There are various stake-holders with varying interests involved in projects like the Hart van Zuid. The search for community consensus in such a project might be futile. In such a context, defining the concept of ‘community’ in itself might be questionable. Surveying the community results in multiple individual opinions, as opposed to a collective consensus. As urbanists, we are tasked with negotiating spaces that brings together the needs of both individuals and collective user groups in harmony. The awareness of this role is more critical, than searching for mythical community consensus in design development. While engaging with different user groups and individuals, the urbanist is also tasked with the role of teasing conflict, and negotiating different needs and desires into a single project. Public Participation in
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development is crucial in facilitating these conflicts. It not only adds to an urbanist’s knowledge about the space, but also an important step in the creative process. That said, public opinion in co-creation or co-evaluation of space without misusing said public opinion should be a big concern for urbanists. Such projects run the risk of making people feel heard, but this has the potential of being abused or just a means for people to vent and complain. This could possibly have a negative impact on future projects, where people feel less inclined to engage with urban developments, if they feel their opinions have not been considered in the past. But at the same time, even if these projects are a means to complain, it opens up users to feel more aware of their surroundings and evokes ownership in the built environment. • The interviews were edited and published with permissions from Nelson Mota and Otto Trienekens, with permission pending from Machiel van Dorst.
References Hart van Zuid (n.d) Over Ons [Heart of the South: About Us] Retrieved from: http://www.hartvanzuidrotterdam.nl/ over-ons/ [Accessed on 01 Jun 2017] Kickert, C., Derksen, A., Trienekens, O., Van Dorst, M. J., Arnold, J., Tragter, M., ... & Dox, R. (2011). Naar een kloppend hart: Gebruik en waardering van de buitenruimte in Hart van Zuid [Towards a beating heart: Use and Apprecieation of Public Space in the Heart of the South]. Veldacademie Nadin, V. (2017, June 9) Symposium conducted as a part of the Urban Thinkers Campus: Education for a City We Need, TU Delft Sanoff, H. (2000). Community participation methods in design and planning. John Wiley & Sons. Ten Brug, L., Abraham, S., Trienekens, O. (2017) Hart van Zuid 2017: Onderzoek naar het gebruik en de waardering van de openbare ruimte in het Hart van Zuid in Rotterdam. Veldacademie. Rotterdam
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