Community Food Spaces
Sem X
Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Jacob Swanson & Silvester Eduardo
The United States faces a number of issues: fraying social safety nets and community bonds, inadequate diets, industrialized food systems that cause ecological destruction, and a lack of connection to nature. COMMUNITY FOOD SPACES provide a systemic solution to these issues. Combining urban farming, cooking, gathering, and dining into one piece of communal infrastructure, we propose a new typology for urban food systems that are anchored in place, expanding notions of urban living and food production.
Contemporary food systems are enmeshed in numerous environmental, social, and economic contexts and concerns. Current industrialized food systems are harmful to the environment and human health. They emit 20% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, pollute waterways, and harm biodiversity with pesticides and overfertilization(1). Industrial meat operations promote resistance to antibiotics(2). Most of all, these systems are abstract; they alienate us from our food and erode its status as an essential cultural practice, turning dining into eating. The ability to acquire all types of produce year-round further separates us from cyclical temporal cycles.
Food deserts are areas that lack access to fresh, nutritious food or grocery stores of sufficient size and variety(3). In 2022, the NJ Economic Development Authority found that 183,060 Newarkers lived in food deserts based on 24 variables including proximity to large supermarkets. This figure encompasses 58% of the city’s population(4). However, food deserts are a complex phenomenon to which simply re-establishing access to nutritious food may not be sufficient; interventions that deal with dietary habits and build local food networks that empower residents may have more success in increasing food security, as well as effecting larger-scale transformations in the food system(5).
In response, we propose COMMUNITY FOOD SPACES, a new typology that fundementally reorients our relationship to food in urban settings. We build on early twentieth century experiments in cooperative dining clubs and public kitchens(6) and contemporary iterations found in collaborative housing models like cohousing that seek to collectivize the usually hidden and gendered labor of domestic cooking. At the scale of the food system, we engage urban farming initiatives and agroecological movements. Linking cultivation, cooking, and community reestablishes food systems in their local context, promoting requisite knowledge and infrastructural networks to support a transformed – healthier, more environmentally friendly – relationship to food.
A COMMUNITY FOOD SPACE is composed of commercial kitchens, communal dining areas, greenhouses, and areas for storage and preservation. A foodstand distributes produce for off-site preparation, though the majority is grown, prepared, cooked, and consumed on-site. Each Space is the central node of a distributed network of cultivated land, though it is colocated with approximately half an acre of land for cultivation. The extended cultivation area makes use of small pockets of underutilized land – front yards, awkwardly sized lots, and, potentially, park space – knitting them together into a distributed farm commons worked by Space volunteers and landowners using permaculture techniques. Three to seven times a week, selforganized community dinners are held and anyone living and contributing to the Space is welcome to participate.
COMMUNITY FOOD SPACES thus not only provide access to fresh, seasonal produce, but also harnesses social interaction and the community’s knowledge about cooking, empowering them to holistically address issues with contemporary food systems.
(1): Leo Horrigan et al., “How Sustainable Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture,” Environmental Health Perspectives 110, no. 5. (2002): 445-456, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/articles/PMC1240832/.
(2): Horrigan et al., “Sustainable Agriculture.”
(3): James D. Wright et al., “Food Deserts: What is the Problem? What is the Solution?,” Social Science and Public Policy 55 (2016): 171181, https://link.springer.com/arti cle/10.1007/s12115-016-9993-8.
(4): New Jersey Economic Development Authority, New Jersey Food Desert Communities, Trenton: NJEDA, February 9, 2022, https:// www.njeda.gov/food-securityprograms/ (accessed July 7, 2025).
(5): Richard Casey Sadler et al., “Theoretical Issues in the ‘Food Desert’ Debate and Ways Forward,” GeoJournal 81 (2015): 443455, https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s10708-015-96346.
(6): Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution (MIT Press, 1981).
The United States faces a number of issues: fraying social safety nets and community bonds, inadequate diets, industrialized food systems that cause ecological destruction, and a lack of connection to nature. COMMUNITY FOOD SPACES provide a systemic solution to these issues. Combining urban farming, cooking, gathering, and dining into one piece of communal infrastructure, we propose a new typology for urban food systems that are anchored in place, expanding notions of urban living and food production.
Contemporary food systems are enmeshed in numerous environmental, social, and economic contexts and concerns. Current industrialized food systems are harmful to the environment and human health. They emit 20% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, pollute waterways, and harm biodiversity with pesticides and overfertilization(1). Industrial meat operations promote resistance to antibiotics(2). Most of all, these systems are abstract; they alienate us from our food and erode its status as an essential cultural practice, turning dining into eating. The ability to acquire all types of produce year-round further separates us from cyclical temporal cycles.
Food deserts are areas that lack access to fresh, nutritious food or grocery stores of sufficient size and variety(3). In 2022, the NJ Economic Development Authority found that 183,060 Newarkers lived in food deserts based on 24 variables including proximity to large supermarkets. This figure encompasses 58% of the city’s population(4). However, food deserts are a complex phenomenon to which simply re-establishing access to nutritious food may not be sufficient; interventions that deal with dietary habits and build local food networks that empower residents may have more success in increasing food security, as well as effecting larger-scale transformations in the food system(5).
In response, we propose COMMUNITY FOOD SPACES, a new typology that fundementally reorients our relationship to food in urban settings. We build on early twentieth century experiments in cooperative dining clubs and public kitchens(6) and contemporary iterations found in collaborative housing models like cohousing that seek to collectivize the usually hidden and gendered labor of domestic cooking. At the scale of the food system, we engage urban farming initiatives and agroecological movements. Linking cultivation, cooking, and community reestablishes food systems in their local context, promoting requisite knowledge and infrastructural networks to support a transformed – healthier, more environmentally friendly – relationship to food.
A COMMUNITY FOOD SPACE is composed of commercial kitchens, communal dining areas, greenhouses, and areas for storage and preservation. A foodstand distributes produce for off-site preparation, though the majority is grown, prepared, cooked, and consumed on-site. Each Space is the central node of a distributed network of cultivated land, though it is colocated with approximately half an acre of land for cultivation. The extended cultivation area makes use of small pockets of underutilized land – front yards, awkwardly sized lots, and, potentially, park space – knitting them together into a distributed farm commons worked by Space volunteers and landowners using permaculture techniques. Three to seven times a week, selforganized community dinners are held and anyone living and contributing to the Space is welcome to participate.
COMMUNITY FOOD SPACES thus not only provide access to fresh, seasonal produce, but also harnesses social interaction and the community’s knowledge about cooking, empowering them to holistically address issues with contemporary food systems.
(1): Leo Horrigan et al., “How Sustainable Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture,” Environmental Health Perspectives 110, no. 5. (2002): 445-456, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/articles/PMC1240832/.
(2): Horrigan et al., “Sustainable Agriculture.”
(3): James D. Wright et al., “Food Deserts: What is the Problem? What is the Solution?,” Social Science and Public Policy 55 (2016): 171181, https://link.springer.com/arti cle/10.1007/s12115-016-9993-8.
(4): New Jersey Economic Development Authority, New Jersey Food Desert Communities, Trenton: NJEDA, February 9, 2022, https:// www.njeda.gov/food-securityprograms/ (accessed July 7, 2025).
(5): Richard Casey Sadler et al., “Theoretical Issues in the ‘Food Desert’ Debate and Ways Forward,” GeoJournal 81 (2015): 443455, https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s10708-015-96346.
(6): Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution (MIT Press, 1981).