Buildings and food
Our understanding of what creates local distinctiveness has been greatly enriched by the work and publications of the organisation Common Ground. As urban designers, we think of local distinctiveness mainly in terms of the topography and character of the landscape, and the patterns, typologies and materials of built form upon it. But Common Ground goes way beyond that, and documents and celebrates differences between local cakes, and the varieties of apples traditionally grown in the district, as ways of defining what makes one place different from another.
The principle of local distinctiveness defined by what we grow and what we eat was also celebrated by the Food Heroes TV programmes of Rick Stein. These visited mainly rural districts and small towns, and it seems it is more difficult for distinctiveness to thrive in bigger urban areas. There is little food grown in the city, and citizens have mostly lost touch with the origins of their food. The growth of farmers’ markets is a significant and encouraging exception to this.
The supermarket businesses too are making moves towards localism, albeit in small ways yet. Asda has regionalised its distribution points, where food from local growers is collected, and Waitrose is making efforts to source locally where it can, within 30 miles of the shop. These moves though are not motivated so much by a desire for local distinctiveness, more by economy and quality - the political and consumer pressures to reduce food miles and to increase freshness.
I was at a wonderful event recently which sought to suggest how our urban food might contribute more to local identity. It was a dinner organised in Birmingham by MADE, the West Midlands architecture centre, for the regional design review panel and guests. Called Edible Eastside, it took place in a disused factory in the industrial area of Deritend which is part of the Eastside regeneration area. The interior was dressed up and lit for the occasion, and looked surreally reminiscent of the set of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.
The event was described as “a culinary appreciation of a place, with a menu inspired by the rich fauna and food heritage of Eastside”. Digbeth and Deritend have a long history of food production, including perhaps most famously Bird’s Custard, which together with rose hips gathered from the canal banks made a lovely Crème Brulee. Also from the biodiverse Grand Union Canal were nettles, chickweed, spearmint, blackberries, mugwort, wild garlic, and birch, all combined beautifully into a menu specially devised by a local chef-patron, cooking in a corner of the factory. The other famous past local product, Ty-Phoo Tea, perhaps surprisingly did not appear.
I am sure that not everything we ate and drank was sourced locally. The embankments of the Euston line are not yet planted with vines, and we have no local herd to produce cheese (though cattle used to arrive here by train to be slaughtered for the Smithfield market). But Edible Eastside was an innovative and imaginative attempt to connect food to the process of urban place-making, and having been to the first I shall be disappointed if there are not more.
Joe Holyoak
Endpiece, Urban Design, Winter 2008, Issue 105.