Food consumption in the everyday life of liveable cities: design implications for conviviality

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the social aspects of food consumption in the public realm and how built environment design should include places for conviviality. Current urban planning may fulfil human needs, but in some cases, individuals have unpleasant experiences while meeting these needs. A review of existing literature indicates that studies of conviviality during food consumption has focused on design qualities. To investigate the Egyptian experiences in food consumption, the current study employed qualitative and quantitative approaches through four streams of data collection: observations, interviews, opinionnaire and permeability analysis of catchment areas. The results provide design implications for conviviality of food practices to discover the multilateral dimensions of design that can make social interactions part of a satisfying experience. This research concludes that for conviviality attached to food consumption, it is essential to focus on replicable aspects like supporting activities, social settings, and the design based on intent.

KEYWORDS:

• Cairo
• Heliopolis
• nourishing the city
• public realm
• urban design
• liveability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The food desert is a term describes areas where there is little or no access to healthy and affordable food (Beaulac, Kristjansson, and Cummins 2009). In the USA, the term is used to address the residents who live in communities more than 10 miles away from the affordable food outlets (Beaulac, Kristjansson, and Cummins 2009; Ploeg et al. 2012, 3; Treuhaft and Karpyn 2010). In Egyptian cities, the food stores might be available in residential areas by a distance less than the American standard, but the accessibility is not achieved in some places such as the new communities in far Eastern and Western part of Cairo  (Mohamed 2015); and the food desert may be found.

2. The details about the opinionnaire questions are listed in the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9HQZRB7.

3. The researcher of the present work uses the opinionnaire which depends on collecting the data based on attitude scales varied between 5 choices, for instance, “very satisfied” to “very dissatisfied” passing through “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.” The intent of using the opinionnaire instead of a questionnaire in evaluating people’s attitudes is an opportunity of being a formative evaluation. Respondents can feel gently passing through the less rigorous process. The questionnaire can have a type of scaling questions besides other types (e.g. checkboxes, single text box, a matrix of the dropdown menu. The opinionnaire does not have these various types of questions (Alden 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abeer Elshater

Abeer Elshater is an associate professor at Ain Shams University (ASU), Cairo, Egypt, teaching and supervising multidisciplinary topics in the ideology of urban design. She has worked on some international research projects with international universities. Her research interest focuses on topics related to urban design between theory and practice in Middle East Region. Recently, she acts as an ambassador of Regional Studies Association, the United Kingdom (UK).