An edible urbanism: on Ravintolapäivä and food culture in Helsinki
In the midst of all our (Sitra’s) field work on street food in Helsinki, and its wider context, I was asked by Artek to write a short piece for a new magazine — Manifest — that they were co-producing for Helsinki World Design Capital (also to be deployed at the Salone design show in Milan.)
I quickly wrote a kind of evolving backdrop to where our work is going which looks at Helsinki’s street food “revolution” of the last year, and describes some familiar ideas of citizen participation, the everyday operating system of the city, fluid and soft cities, and so on: It doesn’t quite discuss them in those terms — the free publication is distributed across the city and beyond through shops, clubs etc. You can also download the PDF from their website (English and Finnish). The rest of Manifest is certainly worth a look too.
Here’s the article I wrote, or rather, the slightly longer original edit of what is a short piece. It, like the Helsinki Street Eats book, is kind of a public set-up job for what follows. Bon appetit.
An edible urbanism
Last summer, Helsinki witnessed two culinary insurgency movements in quick succession. One was fixed in space, and had the outward appearance of an old Citroén van parked outside Lasipalatsi. The other was fixed in…
