Editions

Hungry City

Hungry City

  • How Food Shapes Our Lives

'Cities cover just 2% of the world’s surface, but consume 75% of the world’s resources’.

The relationship between food and cities is fundamental to our everyday lives. Food shapes cities and through them it moulds us - along with the countryside that feeds us. Yet few of us are conscious of the process and we rarely stop to wonder how food reaches our plates.

Hungry City examines the way in which modern food production has damaged the balance of human existence, and reveals that we have yet to resolve a centuries-old dilemma - one which holds the key to a host of current problems, from obesity and the inexorable rise of the supermarkets, to the destruction of the natural world.

Original, inspiring and written with infectious enthusiasm and belief, Hungry City illuminates an issue that is fundamental to us all.

Reviews

  • "'Absolutely crammed with eye-opening facts and figures, a hugely readable account of the part we individually play in a global problem. Highly Recommended'"

    Publishing News

  • "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"

    Observer

  • "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 - is in the real sense of the word - vital"

    The Times

  • "Hungry City is a smorgasbord of a book: dip into it and you will emerge with something fascinating"

    Independent

  • "She can précis her specialist sources briskly, and her own direct research (e.g. a mega kitchen for cooking ready meals) is lively"

    Guardian

More from this Author

About the Author

Carolyn Steel

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.

Carolyn Steel

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