There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses, what is beyond our sense we cannot know. Our senses define the edge of consciousness, and because we are born explorers and questors after the unknown, we spend lots of our lives pacing that windswept perimeter…’
‘The senses don’t just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern. The senses feed shards of information to the brain like microscopic pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When enough ‘pieces’ assemble, the brain says Cow. I see a cow. This may happen before the whole animal is visible; the sensory ‘drawing’ of a cow may be an outline, or half an animal, or two eyes, ears and a nose. Sometimes the information arrives second or thirdhand. Reasoning we call it, as if it were a mental spice.’
From Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses. Phoenix, London 1990.
‘Used after another word, city denotes an intensity of experience or use, without necessarily any urban connotation. Examples, ‘Meat City’ and ‘Bargain City’.’
From Robert Cowan, Dictionary of Urbanism, Streetwise Press, London 2005.
‘In 2007, the world’s population will be predominantly urban for the first time in human history. FAO has been following with attention the acceleration of urbanisation over the last 20 years and its implications for the Organisation. FAO’s Strategic Framework 2000-2015 and corresponding Medium Term Plans therefore identified Food for the Cities as a Priority Area for Inter-disciplinary Action. The task of feeding the world’s cities adequately constitutes an increasingly pressing challenge, requiring the co-ordinated interaction of food producers, transporters, market operators and a myriad of retail sellers. It also requires constant improvements in the quality of transport and distribution systems. Not least, it involves a shared understanding among city officials and national and international development agencies of the common problems and the potential solutions faced when seeking to feed cities on a sustainable basis.
Jacques Diouf, FAO Director-General, Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. (FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture 1998).
‘And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of Madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.’
Swann’s Way: Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust,
Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff.
Published by Penguin Classics, 1998.
‘As Brillat-Savarin says, “Every…sociability can be found assembled around the same table; love, friendship, business, speculation, power, importunity, patronage, ambition, intrigue”. If an event is meant to matter emotionally, symbolically, or mystically, food will be close at hand to sanctify and bind it. Every culture uses food as a sign of approval or commemoration, and some foods are even credited with supernatural powers. Jews attending a Seder eat a horseradish dish to symbolize the tears shed by their ancestors when they were slaves in Egypt. Catholics and Anglicans take a communion of wine and wafer. The ancient Egyptians thought onions symbolized the many-layered universe and swore oaths on an onion as we might on a Bible. Most cultures embellish eating with fancy plates and glasses, accompany it with parties, music, dinner theatre, open air barbeques, or other forms of revelry.’
From Diane Ackerman,
A Natural History of the Senses.
Phoenix, London 1990.
‘So if we were to design a city through food, what might it be like? A ‘sitopic’ city would have strong links with its local hinterland through a lattice-like food network, with active markets, local shops, and a strong sense of food identity. Its houses would be built with large, comfortable kitchens, there would be neighbourhood allotments, possibly a local abattoir. The local school would teach kids about food, and children would learn to grow and cook it from an early age. Above all, the city would celebrate food; use it to bring people together. The architecture could be as modern as you like, but it would not all be designed or built at once. The city plan would use food networks to `seed the city’, putting social and physical mechanisms in place that would evolve naturally over time. The city would thus, as cities were in the past, be partly shaped by food.’
From Carolyn Steel,
Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives.
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2008.
