Market Place

Book excerpt: This book is about designing for food. It explores three fast transforming urban sites in London, centred on the regenerating spaces of Borough, Broadway and Exmouth Markets. It suggests that ‘food quarters’ have emerged in each place, modelling new forms of interconnection between physical design and social processes in which food-related renewal is at the heart. Using case study research, informed by design, morphological and social science techniques, the book explores how the interplay between compact city design and social practices focused on food, strongly influences the making of everyday life in these places. It demonstrates that the quarters have at once enriched the experience of food and eating, and increased urban sustainability and conviviality in and around previously moribund food spaces, while paradoxically contributing to gentrification effects. The book frames this experience within more spatially dominant approaches to city design, which seem to close off convivial food options and choices that would support a more satisfying and resilient urban life. The book draws some conclusions about the complexities of designing and planning for food-led renewal that might apply more broadly to other places in London and potentially to other cities in future.