Hungry City
How Food Shapes Our Lives
Published on 7. March 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
400 pages
978-0-09-958447-6 (ISBN)
Description
*According to the Trussell Trust, food bank use between April and Sept 2018 was up 13% on the same period in 2017.*
*Every year in the UK 18 million tonnes of food end up in landfill.*
Why is this the case and what can we do about it?
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.
*Every year in the UK 18 million tonnes of food end up in landfill.*
Why is this the case and what can we do about it?
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.
Reviews / Votes
Exuberant, provocative... her desire that we understand better and think more about our food, how much we waste, how much energy it consumes and how we dispose of it... It is - in the real sense of the word - vital -- David Aaronovitch * The Times * Hungry City is a sinister real-life sequel to Animal Farm with the plot turned upside down by time in ways even George Orwell could not have foreseen * Observer * Lively, wide-ranging, endlessly inquisitive... Hungry City is a smorgasbord of a book: dip into it and you will emerge with something fascinating * Independent * Absolutely crammed with eye-opening facts and figures, a hugely readable account of the part we individually play in a global problem. Highly Recommended * Publishing News * She can precis her specialist sources briskly, and her own direct research (e.g. a mega kitchen for cooking ready meals) is lively -- Vera Rule * Guardian * A superb account of the uneasy relationship between the city and its means of sustenance, charting the historical rise of urban areas and the monopolisation of the food chain by conglomerates -- Ian Critchley * Sunday Telegraph * this is for the person who knows everything about food but nothing about its source * Sunday Tribune * dense with details, rippling with insight an easy to read... This is everything we need to know. -- William Leith * Evening Standard * An intense, fluid, intelligent, highly absorbing text that provokes vital questions about sustainability * Food Magazine * It's one of those rare books dense with detail, rippling with insight, and easy to read...This is everything we need to know -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * Scotsman *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 151 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
522 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-09-958447-6 (9780099584476)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2013
1st Edition
Vintage Digital
€9.49
Available for download
Person
Carolyn Steel is a London-based architect, lecturer and writer. Since graduating from Cambridge University, she has combined architectural practice with teaching and research into the relationship between food and cities, running design studios at the LSE, London Metropolitan University and at the Cambridge University School of Architecture, where her lecture series on Food and the City was the first of its kind. A visiting lecturer at Wageningen University and director of Kilburn Nightingale Architects in London, Carolyn has been a Rome Scholar, presented on the BBC's One Foot in the Past, and gave a talk at TEDGlobal in 2008.
Hungry City won the RSL Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction (for a work in progress) in 2006.
Hungry City won the RSL Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction (for a work in progress) in 2006.