Wenxi Chen

Food Crossing

The strike on urban food supply by COVID 19 draws a renewed appreciation for a diversified foodscape in our neighborhoods. The existing food supply chain sacrifices the principle of proximity for pursuing scale effect, which has led to long food miles. Long food miles contribute to a more vulnerable food supply chain. When any nodes on the food supply chain go wrong, the whole network will be impacted dramatically. At the same time, unstable food supply and dramatic food prices rising in supermarkets lead to low-income communities especially refugees suffer greater pressure on accessing food due to dual negative effects of temporary visa restrictions and limited work rights.

The challenge of distribution and supply opens up the opportunity to explore how to retrofit the existing food network for waving a more resilient food web. It also drives us to think about how to work in a context of hyper-social innovation, paying greater attention to the governance structures and regulatory frameworks required to help planners adapt to an unpredictable future.

Responding to that, one fundamental agenda is to partner with major property owners, government bodies, business owners, and community groups and establish a win-win cooperation model, which will help break down restrictive barriers for communities to unlock underutilized spaces and create a regenerative foodscape.

Since it can be a challenge for refugees and low-income groups outside the formal food network to mediate between public and private use of the land and engage in the food economy. So the Food Crossing project proposes a mutually beneficial foodscape diversifying system that intends to provide a toolkit for building the bridge between government organizations, community groups, and low-income groups to establish a quickly established and easily maintained foodscape at Footscray.

Wenxi Chen - Food Crossing
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