To continue on the topic of gastronomic delights, we bring you the exciting news (at least among foodies) that the City of Atlanta has, at long last, granted its first mobile food truck permit to an outfit called Yumbii. Food trucks, which generally dish out local and ethnic specialties like tacos in Los Angeles or cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, are the hot trend in American culinary circles; the Atlanta variation serves southern-style Korean tacos (huh??).
The phenomenon of the food truck represents some ideas about architecture and urbanism that have been floating around in my head the past few days. The following little doodles sum them up pretty well. By no means are these ideas original, they simply illustrate the evolution of the archetypal American lifestyle over the past 150 years, with watershed changes occurring in increments of about 50 years or so with the introduction of a new tool - the car, the computer, etc. I'm channelling my inner Roger Lewis here...
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| 1900: A New Century. |
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| 1950: Baby Boomers. |
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| 2010: The Internet Age. |
The first image shows urban life at around 1900: high density, near the urban core, with food, entertainment, and other necessities in close proximity. Your own two feet were your primary means of locomotion. By 1950, automobile and suburban culture had taken hold. The single-family detached house became the desired dwelling unit, and people traveled from their home in their cars to achieve their necessities - a "destination" culture. Today, the personal computer, along with a complex delivery infrastructure, allows us to summon our necessities directly to our McMansions, where we also work and find entertainment. The arrows represent the behavior of the consumer in relation to the flow of goods, and commodities; first, goods and consumers revolved closely around the home, then consumers extended directly outward from the home, and now goods come directly inward.
Food trucks are, in essence, symbols of the inward lifestyle. They become units of mobile architecture that bring goods (in this case wacky tacos) to wherever people request them. Social media websites like Twitter and Facebook facilitate this interaction.
It would be a good exercise to try and draw a diagram for the year 2050, the next step in the series.
(Top photo Christiane Lauterbach / Carson Young / Atlanta Food Carts blog)
Hey that 1950s house is on Moore's Mill!
ReplyDeleteI think you could do a 2050: Peak Oil sketch, which would harken back to your 1900 sketch but with looming nuclear plants nearby (if there'll be a technological source of power in addition to the wind/solar sources);
You could do a 2050: Detroit sketch, resembling your 1950 sketch with Broadacre City-type farms in between houses...
What's interesting is your 2010 sketch, of a house with no neighbors, because the inhabitants don't *need* neighbors, not when they're so *connected* to everything...and yet, I write this from a laptop in my wi-fi house, looking over my fence at my (crazy) neighbor's mcmansion, pondering the fact that everyone around me keeps firearms in their houses...
John you've really outdone yourself this post, excellent sketches and an interesting idea about how the food truck is an evolution of urban topology (which ATL is dreadfully late to, and these kind of food trucks are all over construction sites throughout the south)
ReplyDeleteyour 1900 sketch appeals to me most, so hopefully things are cyclical.
Brian, Peak oil I think will be sooner than 2050... and I bet it will be coal plants instead of nuclear ... and I read a report about Detroit that their soil is unfit for sustenance farming ... so I think it will turn into a real ghost town. thankfully the winter frost heaves will sooner or later completely wipe the place off the face of the earth.
Why don't you guys do some 2050 sketches, I'll do one, and we'll compare? Unless that's too corny...haha. I do have an idea though but its too rad to share in text form (did I use the word correctly?)
ReplyDeleteIf you want to see what Detroit - I mean, Delta City - will be like in the near future, just watch the Robocop movies.
ReplyDeletewatch 'children of men' ... thats what 2050 will be, not necessarily with the lack of human offspring, but replace that with a general malaise and keep the dystopian atmosphere
ReplyDelete