Presentation of the first paper to study urban food mapping?

During the recent international conference Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future, Katrin Bohn and Ferne Edwards presented their paper A short overview of food mapping: Developing a cross-disciplinary approach to an expert audience. Its main question will be taken foward during a workshop meeting tomorrow, Wednesday 30th September, with contributors interested in follow-up projects.

In their paper, Ferne and Katrin elaborated on current processes in anthropology and urban design that are changing traditional mapping practices with an apolitical, authorative voice to new maps that make visible, empower, connect, and communicate new understandings of urban space. Their contribution provided a background from anthropology and urban design perspectives, showcased outputs and processes and explored tensions, influences, and future directions. It asked:
‘From an anthropological and an urban design perspective, how can we define food mapping as a distinct new activity and subject area that enables new ways of approaching contemporary urban issues?’

After laying out the specificities of mapping food, we first established the differences and similarities of our disciplines when doing so using examples from our own (design) research. We then embarked on a first defining of “urban food mapping” and opened up this draft definition to our audience for discussion.

As co-curators of the conference panel Mapping the Edible City: Making visible communities and food spaces in the city, Katrin and Ferne will be taking foward their research question – as well as several others that emerged in the panel – during the online workshop meeting on Wednesday 30th. If you are interested in this subject area and can imagine to contribute to a joint publication or exhibition, do feel free to get in touch.

For more information on our paper see here.

For information on the RAI/RGS conference see the conference’s own website.

For information on the curation of the Mapping the Edible City panel see here.

Image: Cover slide of the presentation A short overview of food mapping (source: Bohn and Edwards 2020)