Which domestic appliance is largely responsible for the growth of Houston? What makes Seattle so rainy? What holds Philadelphia's emblematic cheesesteak sandwich together?
Why, the air conditioner, the Olympic Mountains, and emulsifiers, of course. The authors of a short article in Discover find that some unlikely candidates play strong roles in the defining character of a number of cities. (Below, Geno's Steaks in South Philadelphia, via Flickr...despite my affection for Lee's.)
Speaking of food: I just finished reading, and can highly recommend The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir, wherein author Amy Trubek explores ideas of terroir from an American perspective. A wide-ranging meditation on food production and consumption that spans history, geography, biology, and culture, the book offers both analysis on current ideas of "local" food as well as predictions for the future on how notions of place are bought and sold (and eaten and drank).
The book is a great primer to anyone who ever feels baffled at the supermarket, reading packaging that details the relative value of a product's origins, production, or benefits. As Trubek points out, the knowability of a product is often frustratingly elusive:
From the point of view of the consumer, not every person who drinks wine or eats cheese, bread, or...maple syrup knows much about the origins of these foods or beverages. And for the 98 percent of Americans who do not farm for a living, and especially the 55 percent who live in urban areas, how can they know much about our cheese, chocolate, coffee, and wine? We have plenty of information--we get it through advertising, word of mouth, custom, diet and health experts, cookbooks, and magazines--but almost all of our knowledge is abstract, a series of received recommendations, guidelines, or sales pitches. Our every day lived experience, meanwhile, does not include farming, or having conversations with farmers, or for many, even seeing a farm....This paradox--the chasm between what we know for ourselves about food and wine and what we must be told--lies at the core of any contemporary effort to build the taste of place.
That line of thought speaks to placemaking itself, and the relative values placed on site and context during the design process. It's also valuable food for thought regarding marketing of place in a global economy. Place is necessarily tied to a specific geographic location, but the products that evoke that place are not. What is the value of local versus global, and what are the possibilities for expression of that relationship, analagous to a food's flavor--materials, spatial relationships, organization?
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