Designing the alternative food system for the future
We imagined that in 2030, a new alternative food system has emerged. To get fresh vegs and fruits, residents no longer need to rely only on supermarkets anymore. Urban farming becomes the new normal and everyone in the borough should have a space for growing their own food and connecting to other people in the community.
Introduction
To provide you with a little bit of context, the Southwark council has developed Southwark Council’s Climate Change Strategy which is becoming a carbon-neutral borough by 2030 (NET ZERO).
We, as MA Service Design students from the University of the Arts London, are a small team that works closely with professors in the Design Futures unit to deliver some concept ideas to the Southwark council that might help the borough become carbon-neutral. Let's explore our journey!
FYI: This article might contain some personal reflections.
Understand the current situations
Understanding current situations we were facing in different aspects, from holistic views to individual views, gives us many advantages that might lead us to new opportunities.
At the beginning of the project, secondary research played a big role in helping us do a systematic investigation. We spent early time researching carbon emissions from several industrial sectors. Later, we specified the topic, which is food, to understand the challenge deeper.
Carbon analytics on Food
For a better understanding of food’s carbon emissions, we started from a holistic view, a food ecosystem. We mapped out the lifecycle of food in the UK, from farms to plates. And we found one interesting fact about imported food (Below quote).
In 2020, the UK imported 46% of the food it consumed. No one country provides more than 11% of those imports, a picture which has been stable for some time. By value, £48 billion of FFD was imported and £21.4 billion was exported.
- United Kingdom Food Security Report 2021
Almost half of our food in the UK was imported. And I always saw imported food in my everyday life. Every time I went to a supermarket, most of the fresh vegetables or fruits normally came from other countries, like Morocco, Portugal, Egypt, or Costa Rica. Some vegetables or herbs might not be able to grow here in the UK, but some can easily thrive in your backyard.
Carbon analytics in the borough
Southwark provided a ton of documents about the environment, climate, and action plans. We browsed through some of it, and one metric that had our attention is Borough-wide consumption-based emission, from Figure 2.3.1 of the Southwark Climate Change Action Plan. The report said that almost 50% of consumption-based emissions come from Trasport and storage.
Farming in the borough
After working on secondary research, we would like to see what life in the borough looks like. We started to explore the borough and self-document using photographs, and notes — a self-ethnographic approach (Stickdorn, Adams, Hormess and Schneider, 2020). We found a couple of interesting things that related to food like farming, gardening, allotments, and local markets. The thing that stood out is we found a large farming space with empty raised beds in Burgess Park and empty spaces in the neighborhood. Can we as local residents in the borough use raised beds to grow vegs?
What do people think about food and urban farming?
We would like to understand problems in the context of Southwark residents, we used the classic primary research method, contextual interview. Interviewing can provide us with a deep understanding of the problem, the reason behind it, or even new insights. We interviewed residents with both techniques — open conversation and conversation with objects (Prototypes and Newspapers). We do a rapid prototype in the early stage of designing to see how people think about our idea or start the conversation.
We have conducted several interviews with the locals in the parks, on the street, and in the markets. These are some interesting insights.
- Rising living costs might convince people to grow something
- The elderly spend most of their time at home. Some of them are gardening and farming as a hobby, and always keep their garden tidy
- People in the community gardens are not growing their vegs to rely their life on it, but more about building connections with the community, and relaxation
- Some people waited for 2–3 years in order to get an allotment
- No farming spaces can be a barrier for some people to start farming
- People from other countries (students, citizens, or immigrants) paid a lot for imported veg to cook their national dishes.
After researching and analyzing the collected data, we store analyzed data in our Evidence safari — bite-sized knowledge and insight center that can be used to create a conversation with the team later. Also, keep updating Evidence Safari will help connect the latest insights and generate new conversations easier.
Explore the timeline
“Our future depends on how we understand the past”
— Gustavo Cerati
After we have researched the present situation, we’re starting to look at other timeframes— past and future. We believed that the more we understand the past, the more we will be able to design an accurate future. Futures thinking will also focus on signals of change and expectation to provide a series of future scenarios (hubraum, 2020).
In the past
Allotments were born hundred years ago. The main purpose is to solve food poverty problems. Nowadays, the government and councils launched many diverse actions to encounter food poverty, which mostly are more effective than growing your own vegs in allotments. But allotments from a hundred years ago still existed. The allotments system roots until today and it becomes more about community activities.
From my personal experience in a community garden, we use gardening to connect people or share knowledge rather than growing for survival. And I, surprisingly, found out that most of the community gardeners have rich knowledge of vegetable farming, and are able to produce vegs productively. One of my favorite practices from the old lady gardener in the community garden is using wasted beers to trap pests (slugs, flies, and more). We’re recycling waste from the city and using it to protect plants without damaging the environment.
Running a community garden can be a challenging task. It takes effort and time to grow. And sometimes your raised beds got damaged, your tools need to be repaired, or attend/run a community event. All of those tasks need funding to keep the garden spirit alive.
In the future
When thinking about the future, anything can be possible. We can think like Utopian futurists, someone who thinks they can envision a perfect (The Foresight Guide, 2019)— a better society and a perfect world. We also can be like Dystopian futurists, someone who is convinced the wheels are falling off society in basic ways (The Foresight Guide, 2019) — completely opposite of Utopian.
But in reality, the future is not black and white. Protopia futures, which is combining Utopian, Dystopian, and other aspects of society together (Bielskyte, M., 2021), will create a possible future that is slightly better than the existing one.
There are many futuristic concepts and research that inspired us. We tried to keep the Protopia concept in mind while researching so that we can stick with possible futures.
We also generate our own ideas using the Ban-Amplify-Create method. We ask ourselves what the food system looks like in 2030 when the UK becomes carbon neutral, and what will be banned, amplified, or created in the future.
Another method we used to generate the ideas in the future is using the
What if question. Challenging the system creates innovation.
- What if the UK has to grow its own food?
- What if UK citizen has to grow their own food?
- What if there is no supermarket in the UK?
- What if food waste becomes illegal?
- What if urban farming can provide food for everyone in London?
The simple method yet powerful outcome.
We also need to hear feedback and ideas from residents. To bring ideas or start a conversation with the local residents, we created a “Newspaper from the future” which contain possible ideas and headlines from 2030.
After researching the past and future, stored all collected data in Evidence safari as usual.
“The future doesn’t just happen. We are building it, and we are building it all the time.” — Hannah Fry.
Concept development
Design thinking might be able to help us solve the problem, but what about problems in the future?
Speculative Design combines Design Thinking methods with the story-telling and future-world-building techniques of speculative fiction to produce prototypes of future products or experiences (Lutz, D., 2020). Always keep a future-world lens on before looking at the problem.
When speculating the future, future scenarios can be categorized into possible, plausible, probable, and preferable futures (Dunne, A. and Raby, F., 2013) depending on the possibility — limitations of businesses, technologies, or society.
Mostly, designers will speculate and generate ideas on possible, plausible, and probable futures. Later, designers let people debate, discuss, and think about those 3 future areas. In this way, people begin to imagine and articulate their preferred futures (Lutz, D., 2020).
“It’s taking a problem outside design, and using design to address it” — Sir Christopher Frayling
During the concept development, we have to find the solution that fits local residents the most. The Research through Design principle helps us capture knowledge and important feedback (Baytaş, M. A., 2021). We rapidly designed and developed a prototype and brought it to people. Let people experience it, and feel it. So that we can capture true knowledge from people. The loop of “Prototyping, testing, and iterating” can continue forever as long as we have time, and resources.
After the prototype testing and feedback analysis, we evolve our concept into the final concept, in the short future (2025) and far future (2030).
Final concept in 2025
After a long research process, we finally finish our final idea — enabling people to effortless grow their own vegs.
Are you looking for spaces to grow vegetables?
Are you waiting for allotment allocation?
Are you having unused spaces that create no value?
We are a service/platform where you can share or rent unused space for farming. Unused spaces can be abandoned allotments, small gardens in front of your house, empty construction sites, or spaces in the park near you.
Why is it preferable?
Imported food contributes a large portion of the carbon footprint in the country due to almost half of the food here was imported. Reducing imported food from other cities or countries might help reduce transportation which will lead to reducing in carbon emissions.
A new ecosystem can help residents reduce their living costs on small vegs, fruits, and herbs. Able to collect vegetables, fruits, and herbs might have residents save some amount of money. Especially, during high inflation or economic crisis, people will become more aware of their spending.
More interaction between neighborhoods. Starting from space owner and space renter work together. Imagine a new young adult in the area is able to connect to local residents through urban farming in unused spaces. Help to farm together, share farming knowledge, or take care of the garden while we’re away. Small interactions can potentially bring people in the community become closer.
Increasing local activities can help boost the local economy. Farmers will need more materials to farm, and vegetables left to sell (in case of overconsumption farming). Having a space in a community to exchange make transactions sustained in the local area.
People can access fresh vegetables and fruits easily. Fresh vegetables and fruits basically have rich nutrition and last longer. Pick-when-we-need also helps reduce food waste.
And also a paradise for a multicultural society. When people are away from home, food can remind them of their home country. A cultural community garden can be a perfect place for gathering and sharing in the community.
The concept itself might not be super focused on carbon-neutral, but we believe it finally links to reducing carbon-neutral and enabling more activities to contribute to the carbon-neutral challenge.
Final concept in 2030
To project a little bit further, we also think about the concept in 2030.
Imagine we have reliable food sources within our city. In London, urban farming become a mainstream business. An urban farming system can feed every Londoner.
Farming is not just about growing your veg on the raised beds outdoor. Indoor farming becomes popular in 2030 too. Because of unpredictable climates make it is harder to grow vegs outdoor. New urban farming spaces have emerged — empty spaces in the building, hydroponic labs in the building which allow anyone to grow and pick the vegetables for your salad, farming inside a tube station where you can pick up some vegetables on the way home, inside an old abandoned factory, and many more than we can imagine.
Those spaces become available on our platform.
The new food ecosystem also creates a new opportunity for new business. Many small businesses emerged to support the new food ecosystem.
- Farming consultant
- Farming care when you’re away
- Supermarket for urban farming
- Portable and movable raised beds
- Vegetables, fruits, herbs, and tools exchange — barter system in a micro-community.
- New infrastructure to support serious urban farming — like disposal service, soil nutrition service, or plant clinic.
- New transportation that aims to transport materials for gardening and farming.
- New regulation on urban farming quality
- The education system teaches students more about urban farming
- Government redesign concept of food security — How urban farming can improve food security? or make it worst?
The behavior of people has changed too.
- When people are planning to cook, they will check their own backyard first. Then check the community garden or urban farming supermarket.
- People know how hard to grow vegs, so they care more about food waste
- A micro-community becomes stronger.
- More collaboration between each micro-community because nearby alias can help each other without too much effort.
But not every people interested in growing their own vegetables. How can this new system support those groups of people? When we stop food importing, how can businesses supply an high demand for fresh ingredients? Many challenges are waiting for us. And how can we address and solve all of them? No, we can’t.
From Speculative Design, designers might be able to design possible futures and many scenarios. And this could be potentially another Utopian possible future that can spark the conversation and debate. With your help and idea iteration, we might be able to choose our preferable future together.
What would you think about life in 2030 that we projected?
What I learn
“We can think about the future with linear timeline. Or we can start with the end and project it back to the present like Speculative Design do” — Me
Speculative Design can be challenging when looked at a challenge from the Design Thinking perspective. When I first hear “Speculative Design”, I don’t understand it. I treated it like a design thinking methodology but in the future. At that point, I think everything is fine. But without future-world-building, I slightly ship my mindset from future to present and give all my attention to the present problem without noticing.
Especially engineers like me, we’re good at solving the problem in front of our eyes. Instead of looking for possible creative futures, I was looking for possible futures.
Once Backcasting comes to my focus, I clearly understand the purpose of Speculative Design — start with the end and project it back to the present. I should always keep it in mind.
After this unit, interestingly, I started to think more about possible futures even though I was working on engineering work. Seem like I really got influenced by Speculative Design.
“Diversity of thinking unlocks the design challenge” — Fergus Roche
In the last week of the unit, I saw how a co-design workshop can benefit the Speculative Design project. Because future designers are looking for preferable futures, a co-design workshop can be a place to gather feedback and think about the future with a diversity of thinking: different backgrounds, different disciplines, and different thoughts (Roche, F., 2021). The more diversity we have, the more accurate and preferable future we can design.
Future-oriented co-design (Koskinen, J., 2022) workshop is another potential way to speculate on the future. We might get some insights from true future forerunners.
“Collaborate when we must, explore our own idea when we can? Be careful” — Me
Due to the large team size, compare to other teams in the unit, we take advantage of it. We split or paired up to explore our own idea. The good thing is we can explore more ideas, and produce more outputs. But there are some disadvantages. For example, information in the team moves very fast. If we do not sync often, we can get lost and be in other directions easily. With a short-term project and limited time, things become more chaotic easily. Later on, it’s hard to combine all information.
I quoted myself this because this sentence is tricky. We have to use at the right place and at the right time. Otherwise, things can be lifting off in different directions, and use a lot of energy to make it united.
Thanks for reading! 🤩
References
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Southwark Council. 2021. Southwark Climate Change Action Plan. [online] Available at: <https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s99899/Appendix%20B%20Techncial%20appendix.pdf> [Accessed 19 May 2022].
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Lutz, D., 2020. Future Thieving #1 — Stealing from the future with speculative design. [online] Available at: <https://uxdesign.cc/stealing-from-the-future-with-speculative-design-e769059b6689> [Accessed 24 May 2022].
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