Hazel Borys

The allure of food

Principal and managing director of PlaceMakers, Jun 20, 11.

Tagged with quality of life, food, urbanism, agricultural urbanism

All the recent talk of Agrarian Urbanism has sent me down a tangential thought process. The difference between life and lifestyle. Lifestyle has come to mean how we spend our money on the weekends – or maybe squeeze in after work – before we get back to the grind. Things that often have more to do with entertainment than community. Over the last 50 years or so, shopping and golf have become central national pastimes.

What if, instead, life became a little more organic again?

Innately, life is internal. Lifestyle is external. However, in my parent’s generation, in a more agrarian time, they were one and the same. We were more connected – by necessity – to what sustains us.

The coming age of austerity has caused all sorts of redefinitions, and has brought a number of reprioritizations. Lifestyle has perhaps been put in its place a bit, giving life its due.

Yesterday, Andrés Duany said something that particularly struck me. That, in the next generation, the market square is likely to replace the shopping square.

When my parents were kids, this was certainly true. The farmer’s market was a gathering place that was not only fully integrated into both local urbanism and culture, but was also essential to life. Most cities had at least one in each quadrant, although sadly the few historical examples that survived have become regional destinations. Now you’d be hard pressed to find a community-based economic development plan without a farmer’s market, in both rural and urban settings.

Agriculture is making its way back into our lives as we search for the organic, the connected, and the communal. As we search for meaningful daily rituals and seasonal celebrations. As we search for slow food, localism, community, economic resiliency, environmental stewardship, health and fitness, and just plain fun. And in a time in which we’re seeking to wean ourselves off of petroleum for a wide range of reasons, localism seems like a viable path forward.

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Full Source: The allure of food: It’s not just a lifestyle. It’s a life.
Source: New Urban Network, June 17, 2011

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