Design at the end of the food system: hybrid foodscapes in the realm of consumption

This chapter considers our changing contemporary food systems through a spatial design lens focused on the realm of urban consumption. On the one hand, it highlights how ongoing shifts - in our social structures, rapid digitalisation and increasing environmental vulnerability - inevitably shape our built environment and its utilisation - and thereby, also specifically shape our foodscapes. Building on this understanding, this author argues for challenging our rigid presumptions about the familiar physical forms, models and spatial typologies that constitute our foodscapes, and suggests actively re-imagining the spatial structures and infrastructures of food - from housing to hospitality - in service of accommodating desirable changes in urban food consumption. If redesigning the food environment can help facilitate sustainable urban food systems, then it is worth elaborating, what exactly desirable foodscapes mean in practice, or more specifically, what they mean in urban, spatial and design practice.