Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives

Carolyn Steel

Jan 2013 · Random House

About this eBook

'Cities cover just 2% of the world’s surface, but consume 75% of the world’s resources’.

The relationship between food and cities is fundamental to our everyday lives. Food shapes cities and through them it moulds us - along with the countryside that feeds us. Yet few of us are conscious of the process and we rarely stop to wonder how food reaches our plates.

Hungry City examines the way in which modern food production has damaged the balance of human existence, and reveals that we have yet to resolve a centuries-old dilemma - one which holds the key to a host of current problems, from obesity and the inexorable rise of the supermarkets, to the destruction of the natural world.

Original, inspiring and written with infectious enthusiasm and belief, Hungry City illuminates an issue that is fundamental to us all.

About the author

Carolyn Steel is an architect, lecturer and writer. Since training at Cambridge, she has combined architectural practice with teaching and research into the everyday lives of cities, running design studios at the LSE, Metropolitan University and at Cambridge, where her lecture course 'Food and the City' is an established part of the degree programme. As well as being a director of Cullum and Nightingale Architects, she was a Rome scholar, has written for the architectural press, and has presented on the BBC's One Foot in the Past.