ABSTRACT
This chapter reects on the process of the re-emergence of food and agriculture as an area of urban concern and intervention by planners, designers and others. It seeks to articulate the nature of and the approaches to food issues in planning through an examination of public discourse, focusing on exhibitions as a public manifestation of this discourse and as a communication medium with a long tradition in planning history. It starts with a brief consideration of the roots of planning pioneers’ interest in urban food production and of the context for the emergence, disappearance, and resurgence of this interest. This leads to an analysis of recent exhibits and related public events which have explicitly sought to highlight the relationships between food and cities, past and present. We use the lessons from our involvement as co-curators with Mark Gorgolewski in a recent exhibition called Carrot City: Designing for Urban Agriculture as a case study. Launched initially in Toronto, Canada, this exhibit has travelled to numerous cities on three continents, generating a website and a book, among other media. At the heart of this chapter, we will recount and reect on the immediate and larger lessons learnt from the experience of staging the exhibition in terms of content and communication, the evolution of the exhibit itself, and its impacts.
