Understanding urban foodscapes for planning, design and governance of cities

In May 2019 a one-day conference at SLU in Alnarp was arranged on the theme of Urban foodscapes. The conference highlighted the link between food and urban development as key issues for sustainable development and engaged several speakers with expertise in food culture research, landscape research and several applied aspects of the relationship between the city and the food.  

The one-day conference was aimed at broad professionals with public or private assignments, teachers, researchers, students, at and outside SLU, as well as other interested parties. Occupational categories that were addressed were, for example, physical planners, landscape architects and architects, municipal ecologists, those working with urban agriculture, collaboration between urban and rural areas, food strategies or within the restaurant world.  

The field span over a great width in this meeting between food culture research and landscape research; Food culture research (or 'food studies') including subjects such as ethnology, anthropology, economics, gastronomy, food history, food archeology, behavioral science and sociology, while Landscape research spans both natural sciences and social sciences and humanities and is interested in spatial and temporal and temporal relations food production on the physical and perceived landscape. The conference concluded with a panel discussion involving practitioners from various stakeholders. 

The project provided important foundations for future cooperation in the field of Urban foodscapes and foodscape studies in general. The outcome of the conference contributed to important input for the master's programme Food and landscape and contributed to other project applications in the field. 

Read an interview with Ingrid Sarlöv Herlin about the conference.