The Very Hungry City: Cultivating the Urban Diet

Abstract

How can localized food systems integrated into the urban fabric foster community health, environmental resilience, and heightened food literacy? The modern urban food system, characterized by curated retail experiences and polished marketing strategies, makes the everyday consumer oblivious to the complex operations that sustain it. This apparent "well-oiled machine" masks significant operational flaws, contributing to the dual crises of food deserts and limited food literacy. The financial burden of nutrition often incentivizes reliance on processed foods, linking health status directly to financial privilege. This thesis aims to inform consumers through enhanced public understanding of food origins. Localized food systems integrated into the existing urban fabric allow for minimizing waste in transportation and over-processing, while fostering community health, environmental resilience, and heightened food literacy. A site-specific urban design intervention focuses on a segment of the historic CandO Canal in Georgetown, D.C., which currently sits dry and nested between commercial and office zones. The project utilizes "food-scaping" (integrating productive agriculture into urban landscaping) and adaptive reuse strategies to transform this obsolete infrastructure into a productive botanical garden specializing in fresh produce. Integrating food production directly into urban life significantly reduces the physical and psychological distance between consumption and source, thereby increasing exposure to fresh produce and fundamentally demystifying the food production process to boost nutritional education and awareness. This project provides a scalable design typology for repurposing existing infrastructure to build a more resilient, equitable, and food-secure urban future, challenging conventional understandings of productive space within the city by making healthy food accessible.