Carolyn Steel

Hungry City
Carolyn Steel

'Hungry City is a sinister real-life sequel to Animal Farm with the plot turned upside down by time in ways even George Orwell could not have foreseen.' Guardian

The relationship between food and cities is fundamental to our every day lives. The gargantuan effort necessary to feed cities arguably has a greater social and physical impact on us and our planet than anything else we do. Yet we rarely stop to wonder how food reaches our plates.

Hungry City reveals that we have yet to resolve a centuries-old dilemma - one which holds the key to a host of current problems, from obesity, the rise of the supermarkets, to the destruction of the natural world. Carolyn Steel follows food on its journey - from the land to market and supermarket,
kitchen to table, waste-dump and back again. She shows how our lives and our environment are being manipulated but explains how we can change things for the better. Original, inspiring and written with infectious enthusiasm and belief, Hungry City illuminates an issue that is fundamental to us all.

'Exuberant, provocative... her desire that we understand better and think more about our food, how much we waste, how much energy it consumes and how we dispose of it... It is - in the real sense of the word - vital' Times

Carolyn Steel is an architect, lecturer and writer. Since training at Cambridge, she has combined architectural practice with teaching and research into the everyday lives of cities, running design studios at the LSE, Metropolitan University and at Cambridge, where her lecture course 'Food and the City' is an established part of the degree programme. As well as being a director of Cullum and Nightingale Architects, she was a Rome scholar, has written for the architectural press, and has presented on the BBC's One Foot in the Past.