The Hunger that Shaped Our Cities

15:00 - 15:30

La Centrale

 Discussions on urban sustainability almost always focus on mobility, energy and materials — but rarely on the factor that has shaped the landscape for millennia: food. Carolyn Steel, a British architect and lecturer at Cambridge, the LSE and the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, brings her practical philosophy to the Utopian Hours stage.

Author of Hungry City (2008) and Sitopia (2020), Steel coined the concept of Sitopia — from the Greek sitos, meaning food, and topos, meaning place: the idea that food networks have shaped the evolution of our bodies, our homes and the global landscape. Industrialisation has distanced food from cities, obscuring its flows and fuelling the ecological crisis. Steel proposes using food as a political, economic and aesthetic tool to reconnect the countryside and the city.

London

Carolyn Steel Writer

Sitopia

An internationally renowned architect and academic, she is a leading thinker on the relationship between food and cities. Author of the award-winning books Hungry City and Sitopia, she explores how food networks have shaped our bodies, homes, and urban environments for millennia. Her concept of Sitopia ("food-place") offers a practical philosophy: using food as a powerful medium to save the world and rethink sustainable development.

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