Critical Mapping for Sustainable Food Design: Food Security, Equity and Justice

This book introduces critical mapping as a problematizing, reflective approach for analyzing systemic societal problems like food, scoping out existing solutions, and finding opportunities for sustainable design intervention.

This book puts forth a framework entitled ＂wicked solutions＂ that can be applied to determine issues that designers should address to make real differences in the world and yield sustainable change. The book assesses the current role of design in attaining food security in a sustainable, equitable, and just manner. Accomplishing this goal is not simple; if it was, it would not be called a wicked problem. But this book shows how a particular repertoire of design tools can be deployed to find solutions and strategize the development of novel outcomes within a complex and interconnected terrain. To address the wicked problem of food insecurity, inequity, and injustice, this book highlights 73 peer-reviewed design outcomes that epitomize sustainable food design. This includes local and regional sustainable design outcomes funded or supported by public or private institutions and local and widespread design outcomes created by citizens. In doing so, this book sets the stage for an evidence-driven and evidence-informed design future that facilitates the designers’ visualization of wicked solutions to complex social problems, such as food insecurity. Drawing on an array of case studies from across the world, from urban rooftop farms and community cookers to mobile apps and food design cards, this book provides vitally important information about existing sustainable food design outcomes in a way that is organized, accessible, and informative.

This book will be of great interest to academics and professionals working in the field of design and sustainable food systems. Students interested in learning about food and sustainability from across design studies, food studies, innovation and entrepreneurship, urban studies, and global development will also find this book of great use.

Audrey G. Bennett is the Director of the Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Lab at Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design and an inaugural University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor at the University of Michigan, USA. She is also a former Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Scholar of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She studies the design of transformative images that, through interactive aesthetics, can permeate cultural boundaries and impact the way we think and behave towards good social change. She was awarded the 2022 AIGA Steve Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary.

Jennifer A. Vokoun is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Walsh University, USA. She is the founder and Director of The Center for Sustainable Food Design, formerly the Food Design Institute, facilitating community engagement and leading participatory design research on food systems issues, and serves as a faculty leader for the university’s Blouin Global Scholars, an interdisciplinary cohort focused on food, sustainability, and hunger in a local and global context. Her research focuses on social innovation applied to sustainable food systems and food insecurity issues.