David Barrie

Deep pan localism

Over at real estate magazine Estates Gazette [subscription required], news arrives that as the credit crunch tightens, Domino's Pizza is opening outlets in the U.K. at the rate of almost one store a week.

In an article in a recent edition, a business development manager spills the beans - no, I'll forget the metaphors - that the local is the global, vice-versa and upside down.

We typically set an eight-minute delivery boundary, so that there can be quite a few stores in a small area that don't compete with each other because people order very locally.

The best performing 'customer category' is "Happy Families" -

typically a household in which both parents are working and living in a detached or semi-detached house on a new housing estate.

And according to the article, those who fall into the category of "Urban Intelligence" are also enthusiastic pizza consumers.

This term has little to do with IQ - it is simply people who tend to live in cities, and in apartments rather than houses.

I don't know whether any of this is true but it does make for a neat marketing formula:

Gentrification does not = organic fruit-bread sellers but = inorganic tuna and sweetcorn on spun dough.

And 'local' = a franchised global brand working within an eight-minute radius.

Image courtesy of Jill Greenseth.

Provenance is a luxury item

In a recent edition of Metropolis magazine, Bruce Sterling wrote an article on Slow Food - and took no prisoners:

The upshot is an obscure piece of rural heritage reengineered as a curated service/product in Europe's modern-food heritage industry.

At the centre of Slow, according to Sterling, is a rigorous system of authenticating and anointing  local products like

The Cornish Pilchard. The Chilean Blue Egg Hen. The Cypriot Tsamarella and Bosnian Sack Cheese.

In another part of the ball-park, Lucia van der Post opens an article in the London Financial Times saying:

These days, among sophisticated consumers, provenance counts. Where the fish is caught, how the product is made, whether the makers are properly paid and whether the materials are ethically sourced are no longer just polite questions but real considerations.

Van der Post goes on to extol the virtues of decorative felt rugs that retail up to $10,000, are handmade by nomadic peoples in Kyrgyzstan and fragrantly marketed with Capital Letters as

Unique felt rugs from the Mountains of Heaven.

Once upon a time, there was a heritage industry: today, it's authenticity.

Now authenticity is no bad thing but it does have a habit of converging with business planning for sophisticated  consumers, get smothered in sincerity and it's at times over-liberally sprinkled with words like 'sustainability' and 'democracy'.

So by the time it hits the plate - as food or anything else - it carries high life-cycle costs and is expensive.

As Sterling writes,

In a globalized "flat world", the remaining peaks soar in value and become natural clusters for a planetary elite.

In other words, things that are authentic and have provenance become a luxury item.

So what?

Well there is a casualty.

And it's something really basic:

The thrill, excitement and subversion of imitation.

Cartoon courtesy of Gastonomica.

Fields of gold

This is an image of the celebrated Not a Cornfield art and land project in Los Angeles:

 

And this is an image of the existing landscape of a housing estate in the town of Middlesbrough, North East England that was involved in an urban farming initiative I ran last year:

Yesterday, the price of wheat skyrocketed as Kazakhstan, one of the world's largest exporters of grain, said it would impose export tariffs to curb sales of wheat. The reason: to contain domestic inflation of nearly 20%.

Dear city mayors, planners and architects,

How about reviewing those renewal strategies based on physical, social and cultural build and write a Five Year Crop Plan?

Be inspired by the spatial planning of Not a Cornfield:

Or the first vision of architects Andre Viljoen and Katrin Bohn for the town of Middlesbrough as a productive urban landscape, in a project enabled by Dott07/Designs of the Time, One North East and The Design Council, England:

Viljoen and Bohn's plan connected tissues of land that might be cultivated, from existing parkland, open green spaces and allotment sites across town to places that local people chose to grow food  as part of the initiative and would like to see urban agriculture happening in the future (red dots above/green dots below):

Not a Cornfield is described as a sculpture. Viljoen's plan for Middlesbrough: an edible town.

It remains to be seen whether spikes in commodity prices, peak oil, the dearth of productive arable land and the changing metabolism of compact cities will make all of this financially viable.

But you've got to admit that the vision of an urban design for cities as an unfenced Glastonbury Festival or embargoed Havana is compelling - even if Fidel Castro has stepped down and you don't like hippies.

Urban farming images courtesy of Dott07 Urban Farming. The project was enabled by Dott07/Designs of the Time Ltd., One North East and The Design Council. All rights reserved. Urban Farming Project Site map, copyright of Middlesbrough Council.

Evolving Britain

Sometimes the ability of capitalism to absorb debate, trends and just get on with it is a joy to behold.

This is the headline of an advertisement by U.K. property development company Land Securities in last week's edition of real estate magazine Estates Gazette [subscription required].

The company is marketing one of its shopping malls that has space devoted especially to local and regional independent retailers. The ad goes on to say:

Evolving Britain needs cities with local character and identity. So in our recent redevelopment of the Princesshay centre in Exeter we reserved a street just for independent retailers.

In the last few years, Britain's high streets have become the battle-ground for debate on Clone Towns, with focus thrown on the prevalence and might of national and international grocery stores.

Hostilities have just broken out again with the publication by the Competition Commission of proposals to improve competition between grocery retailers in local markets and address relationships between retailers and their suppliers.

Journalists have taken up pro- and anti-supermarket positions. 

On one side is India Knight of The Times:

Supermarkets are like tower block housing: what once looked like the future now feels mired in the past and what once felt thrilling and new now seems tired and passé.

On the other is Sathnam Saghara writing in the same paper:

Does it matter to shoppers in Watford that their main shopping thoroughfare resembles the high street in Inverness? Isn't your average branch of Boots a nicer place to be than your average independent Happy Shopper?...And is it really true that independent retailers have character? One independent Indian convenience store/Portuguese café/fried chicken outlet seems much like any other to me.

Meanwhile the property market brilliantly adjusts its pitch.

Next month, there's a Slow Food Festival at LandSec's mall in Exeter, hosted by a deli called Chandos featuring wine by the glass and baguettes made up with their own shop produce.

In effect, Evolving Britain continues on its merry way, angsting about food and its distribution, rather than supply.

For grain prices are currently at record highs around the world.

Pakistan recently launched ration cards to provide subsidised food for nearly 7m households.

And last week an undersecretary at the (alarmingly called) Ministry for Social Solidarity in Egypt - the world's largest importer of wheat -  revealed that

The bread subsidy alone went up by around $820m last year to reach $2.45bn.

There's a simple message in all of this: Evolving Britain...worry not about where you buy your bread - but do worry about what it costs.

A (moral) dog's breakfast

Last year, Gastronomica, the journal of food and culture, ran a special edition on the politics of food.

The magazine carried a review of the latest book by Nina Planck, the Queen of farmers' markets and quoted her 'real food' alternative to a key ingredient of life:

The best substitute for breast milk is made from grass-fed, raw whole milk supplemented with live yoghurt and gelatin (for digestion), coconut oil (for immunity), and cod-liver oil (omega-3 fats for eyes and brain).

The latest edition of Observer Food Monthly in the U.K. is devoted to eco-food heroes.

Their clarion call is local, traceable, guilt-free foods, underscored by an article of faith of the Prince of Wales:

I am enormously encouraged by the increasing interest in quality food, where it comes from and how it is produced.

In Vietnam, people eat dog.

Dogmeat is locally reared, eaten only at the close of the lunar month and  is a modern-day expression of an historic rural and ethnic tradition of hunting for and eating wild dogs.

In other words, however ethically hard to stomach, dog is a local, seasonal and authentic ingredient.

Where does our heroic, liberal attachment to traceability, honesty and native tradition end and the morality of what we eat kick in?

In Vietnamese cooking, there are seven ways to cook a dog.

In a culture of grass-fed milk and hardcore food provenance, could one of these recipes ever make an eco-hero's menu? Or is this a dog's breakfast of food ethics?

1. Thit Cho Luoc - Steamed dog
2. Cha Cho - Grilled  dog
3. Rua Man - Steamed dog in shrimp sauce, rice flour and lemon grass
4. Doi Cho - Dog sausage with dog blood, peanuts, vegetables and neck bone
5. Gieng Me Mam Tom - Steamed dog in shrimp sauce, ginger, spices and rice vinegar
6. Canh Xao Mang Cho - Bamboo shoot and dog bone marrow
7. Cho Xao Sa Ot - Fried dog in lemon grass and chilli