Literature review
2.0 Introduction
The review of the literature forming this chapter builds upon the global ecological status, post-sustainability design perspectives and foundational concepts – resilience and regeneration, the question of type, practice theories and participatory design – introduced in Chapter 1. The review spans the literature of contemporary food systems and housing, bridged by the topics of food spaces and food infrastructure. The scope of the review is bound by the research questions set out in Section 1.2, the social-ecological systems
perspective they reflect, and my concern for scale and inter-scalar connections. I therefore focus primarily on the Australian context of the study, but also attend to its interplay with global conditions. My discussion interweaves international syntheses, accounts from particular regions and social contexts, and
contrasting disciplinary developments. This literature takes the form of scholarly and technical works, in addition to popular and narrative material.
I also include three ecological design precedents, recognising the influential role of built artefacts as ‘texts’ in design discourse and design education. In this study, the precedents exemplify transferable social-ecological design knowledge, and aid my interpretation of design knowledge and ideological
positions encoded in material culture more broadly. Each serves as a departure point for further design exploration rather than an archetype – the more
common role assigned to precedents in design literature.
I commence the review with a focus on the food system and food culture in Section 2.1, first drawing on works that reveal the state of the global, industrial food system, and its distortions and inequities. Recognising the role of design in routinely reinforcing this status quo, I distinguish food security and food
sovereignty, and look to grassroots, alternative food movements as countering forces. I then identify the ‘cult of food’, or the transnational cultural phenomenon that has popularised food and cooking, as a further force to be mediated
through design, based on the gravity of the global ecological status. Connecting food systems and housing in Section 2.2, I survey work on the spatialisation of the food system and food culture from contrasting disciplinary perspectives, including recent work on designing urban agriculture and emergent productive housing.
In Section 2.3, I structure my discussion of the literature of housing and its types by drawing parallels with the dominant food system, again with reference to social-ecological factors. Centred on Australian settings, I highlight the primary strategies for future urban growth, noting upward trends in higher density housing and rental tenure, and the significance of an investor-driven market. I then draw these observations into social implications for the future of housing, also to be mediated through design. In outlining approaches to
sustainable housing in Australia, I compare the ‘technocratic’ orthodoxy with the less common integrated, social-ecological orientation. In Section 2.4, the three ecological design precedents illustrate integrated ecological design, and
exemplify the concepts of regeneration, emergent types, participatory design, and design as pedagogy, in practice. I conclude the review by mapping two, key contextual domains for the study, positioning the existing suburbs in particular as an opportune site for ecological restoration and regenerative food
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2.1 Food systems and food culture
The food systems and food culture literature is expansive, with multi-disciplinary concerns spanning ecology, politics, social justice, consumption, animal
welfare, public health, and cooking and eating practices. In addition to scholarly texts, a genre of popular, investigative works has emerged seeking to raise public awareness of the social and ecological impacts of our global, industrial food supply. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast- food World (2006) by American journalist, Michael Pollan is notable among them, providing valuable synthesis of the complex technological developments and power structures that have shaped the contemporary food system.
Following Pollan’s lead, Section 2.1 functions to peel back the normalised face of the industrial food system, revealing ecological degradation, injustice and poverty. These dynamics are then contrasted with the ascendant counter- movements of food sovereignty and alternative food.
The majority of scholarly and popular works trace back to the prescient 1970s text by Frances Moore Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet (1991 [1971]), which gained little traction at the time. Moore Lappé’s ‘radical’ ideas were marginal to those bound within Aldo Leopold’s (1966; 1999) and Edward Abbey’s (1988 [1968]; 1991 [1975]) foundational writing on ecological consciousness,
conservation and the functions of wilderness. With a global perspective, Moore Lappé railed against the gross imbalance in power and resources that
embedded poverty and hunger in many regions while the more affluent increasingly adopt high energy, processed diets which in turn degrade
ecosystems and human health (1991 [1971]). Similarly, the pioneering work in nutrition and food policy of Marion Nestle (for example, 2002) was only recently linked to the food system, as an extension of ecosystems. Today, excessively meat-based diets and demand for animal feed feature as critical agro-
ecosystem and food security issues in the United Nation’s recent Trade and Environment Review (UNCTAD, 2013), echoing Moore Lappé’s assessment. The overview of the current, dominant food system to follow, underscores its unsustainable, fossil-fuel dependence in sharp contrast to the regenerative food systems I seek to foster through design in this study.