Recording economies, patterns and crises
This section includes maps and mappings that make evident our actions on and with food thereby providing a permanent record of these transient activities. Food – where it comes from; how it is produced, transported, traded, prepared, consumed and its waste recycled; and what this signifies to individuals, social groups, societies and the environment – provides an essential focus from which to understand themes that include identity, the senses, economy and place-making. Often, it is the altering of everyday food environments that makes visible their underlying structures and constraints. The Covid-19 pandemic, for example, affected us all, probably most through changes that happened at the individual scale. At the other end of that scale, there is the global food landscape, equally hard to detect, which explores how food travels from field to fork almost invisibly. Urban food maps can capture such patterns using a wide range of mappings methods, from quantifiable to qualitative, including drawing, redrawing, photographing, counting, calculating, journaling, walking and eating.
