Food, landscape and urban design

Abstract

Co-written and illustrated with Dr Jacques Abelman, the chapter focuses in summary on how design relates to food landscapes and why this matters. It explores theoretical antecedents for the way that urban design investigations influence understanding of food and landscape and notes that many urban design approaches use urban design 'elements' or 'qualities' as way of exploring the nature of design in spatial and landscape sense. The chapter touches on the application of spatial concepts such as enclosure, the balance of positive-negative space, and appropriate height to width ratios, and recent challenges to those insights for space shaping in terms of what constitutes public space. The chapter offers a background of landscape character appraisal with its recent evolution in convivial green space, transect and related approaches as fundamental aspects of urban design and food investigations. It explores the way that urban design theory and practice deals with issues like scale as way to interrogate the interplay of spatial design and food. The chapter works through various food space examples could work from small to large scale with examples from streets, markets, neighbourhoods, quarters, towns, urban fringes, conurbations, countryside drawn from our primary research in conclusions and a summary of key points.