Research and Development Initiatives-8

Food-related spaces are generally categorized into production, processing, distribution, and consumption, but factors such as the globalization of food and climate change have dramatically altered their nature. Each region’s “food space” has been uniquely shaped by geographical, historical, and cultural factors. Whereas these spaces were originally linked as part of a continuous context, they have now become separated – resulting in a “fragmentation of knowledge” where consumers do not know the production sites, a “fragmentation of industrial activities” where producers, processors, and service providers do not share environmental or regional information, and a “fragmentation of community” where people who share information and act together are dispersed. Ensuring important food resources for people, and recognizing that the environments which produce food are changing significantly with shifts in the natural environment, it is now an urgent task to reconsider how we produce and consume food in ways that adapt to climate change. Therefore, focusing on the concept of “foodscape” (a key term in recent food culture research), we will record, analyze, and evaluate food and its material environments from past to present, and, through spatial designs that aim to eliminate these fragmentations and forge new connections, facilitate community building and create a new foodscape based on the concept of Gastronomy Geopolitics.