2009: The Dirt Cafe ‘Sitopia’ Project

The upcoming UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen is an urgent and unique opportunity to create a better future for us all. To embrace this moment, we are inviting six special guests to share a meal to discuss how food can play a part in our transition to a better, fairer and more sustainable world.

The Dirt Cafe ‘Sitopia’ Debate and Salon in Copenhagen will take place on December 13th over a special lunch in a 'kolonihavehus', or allotment shed. The creation of the menu is being led by Trine Hahnemann in collaboration with Inger Kjærgaard Jespersen. The Debate will be facilitated by Carolyn Steel. Invited guests include Maarten Hajer, Director of the Netherlands Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving.

The Dirt Cafe ‘Sitopia’ Debate and Salon will take place in New York City on December 17th over a special lunch in a room of Jimmy's No. 43. There creation of the menu is being led by chef Sharone Yaron in collaboration with Claudia Keel, Jimmy Carbone, Anne Saxelby and others. The Debate will be facilitated by Michael Conard.

For more info please contact: Mette Hvid in Copenhagen: +45 2085 4600, mettehd@gmail.com

In alphabetical order, and with a note as to the city where she/he is based, here is a the list of the collaborators involved with The Dirt Cafe ‘Sitopia’ Project: Kubi Ackerman (New York), Bo Damgaard Asmussen(Copenhagen), Sara Asmussen (Copenhagen), Annie Belfoure (New York), Sarah Bilney (London), Sonja Bock (Copenhagen), Jimmy Carbone (New York), Michael Conard (New York), Ilona Coutarelli (New York), Geoff Crook (London), Erin Edwards (New York), Herman Fagerlund (Copenhagen), Yetsuh Frank, Trine Hahnemannn (Copenhagen), Claire Hartten (New York), Mette Hvid-Davidsen (Copenhagen), Debra Italiano (New York), Claudia Keel (New York), Alex Laird (London), Misha Lepetich (New York), Matt Rosenberg (New York), Anne Saxelby (New York), Carolyn Steel (New York), Maria-Paola Sutto (New York), Kerry Trueman (New York), Maria Wedum (Copenhagen) and Sharone Yaron (New York).

Carolyn Steel on Sitopia

What might cities look like a hundred years from now? Predicting the future is never easy, but if cities in the 21st century look much as they do today, only bigger, we will have failed the greatest ecological challenge of our time. Cities have always plundered the natural world for resources, but in the past, so few people lived in them – just three per cent in 1800 – that their impact was limited. Today, with half the global population living in cities and a further three billion expected to join them by 2050, the opposite is true. If the future is urban, we urgently need to redefine what that means.

Of all the resources needed to sustain a city, none is more important than food. In the past, this was self-evident: the sheer difficulty of feeding cities made it so. Without agrichemicals, machinery, refrigeration and rapid transport, cities were forced to be both frugal and inventive with their food supplies. Today, things are very different. We take it for granted that, if we walk into a restaurant or supermarket, food will be there, having arrived magically from somewhere else. We have become careless of food, because industrial food systems have made feeding cities seem easy. But in reality, those systems are destroying the planet faster than any human activity in history, while obscuring our most vital relationship: with nature.

We urgently need a new model for human dwelling – one that recognizes cities as organic entities, intimately bound to the natural world. My proposal is sitopia, meaning 'food-place'. Sitopia is, in essence, a way of recognizing how powerfully food already shapes our lives, and harnessing its power to shape the world better. Food affects, not just our daily habits, but our social, political and economic structures, cultural attitudes, value systems – our very conception of what it means to be human. Food is the great connector. If we can learn to share it as a conceptual and practical tool, we can use it to shape a better common future.

For more info on Carolyn Steel, Sitopia and her book "Hungry City - How Food Shapes Our Lives" please visit 

http://www.hungrycitybook.co.uk/