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9256.pdf (41.63 MB)
ETD Abstract Container
Abstract Header
Spatializing Commensality: The City as Public Dining Room
Author Info
Abedania, Jaren
Permalink:
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1397476882
Abstract Details
Year and Degree
2014, MCP, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Community Planning.
Abstract
As concerns of food insecurity continue to intensify, planning and urban design professionals prioritize improving food systems—the mechanisms by which food is produced, obtained, and consumed—as a means to ensure healthy and vibrant communities. However, such an agenda tends to reduce food to mere alimentary object, a nutritive necessity rather than social agent. Although mitigating food insecurity is a necessary and urgent objective, contemporary planning debate positions food attainment as an end in itself, not a process towards greater civic engagement. Meanwhile sociological and anthropological studies shed light on the distinction between food provisioning, or the buying and selling of foodstuffs, and commensality. In the former, material exchange supersedes social exchange. In such cases, food is understood solely as a quantifiable commodity, and there is a clear separation between the buyer and seller with little to no social transaction required. Conversely, commensality, or fellowship at the table, implies both consumption of food and social interaction. By dining together in the same physical space, people add the intangible element of camaraderie to the consumption of food. Therefore while acts of provisioning may symbolize the sharing of food, they do not equate to situations that stimulate social interaction through sustained physical presence that occur while eating and drinking together. In practice, planners and urban designers fixate on provision and hope for commensality. To be sure, planners and urban designers acknowledge the social connotations of food, but this is often in the context of farmers’ markets and public marketplaces, which primarily function as sites of food distribution. Thus, commensality can serve as another way to position food relative to the planning and urban design professions. In the current mode, practitioners ask, “How do we design for food?” They should also be asking, “How do we design for commensality?” This thesis, “Spatializing Commensality,” contends that commensal acts can stand apart from sites of provisioning as a viable spatial element, particularly in shared public spaces. By analyzing modes of commensality, this project explores a set of spatial strategies to instigate sites of commensality—places for shared food consumption and urban vitality—in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati.
Committee
David Edelman, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Danilo Palazzo, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Pages
113 p.
Subject Headings
Urban Planning
Keywords
commensality
;
public food space
;
shared food experience
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Citations
Abedania, J. (2014).
Spatializing Commensality: The City as Public Dining Room
[Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1397476882
APA Style (7th edition)
Abedania, Jaren.
Spatializing Commensality: The City as Public Dining Room.
2014. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis.
OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center
, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1397476882.
MLA Style (8th edition)
Abedania, Jaren. "Spatializing Commensality: The City as Public Dining Room." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1397476882
Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)
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Document number:
ucin1397476882
Download Count:
280
Copyright Info
© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.