A city is not made solely of streets, buildings and squares. What arrives on the table each day also leaves a spatial imprint: markets need space and deliveries, shops occupy ground floors, and kitchens and canteens create places for shared use. Between them run routes that often extend far beyond the city boundary. Planning this infrastructure therefore means shaping not just food provision, but also proximity, work and encounters.
On 30 October, the ‘New Foodscapes’ conference at the La Cambre-Horta Faculty of Architecture in Brussels brings together specialists in architecture, urban research and agriculture. It forms part of ‘The Belly of the City’, a project that dissolves the usual separation between exhibitions and everyday life: works appear in shops, markets and private spaces, among other locations. Until 15 November, the focus is therefore on places where food is traded, transported, prepared or thrown away.
Food provision is urban planning
Even the simplest survey reveals that food is a spatial question: food must be stored and distributed; it needs places to be sold, access routes, waste disposal and people who work within these systems. Wherever food provision is concentrated or moved elsewhere, everyday life in the neighbourhood changes too. A ground-floor shop can shorten journeys and enliven a street. A large market can bring goods together, but may also have to accommodate deliveries and traffic within a confined space. A communal kitchen can create a meeting place – provided it is genuinely accessible and does not exist merely as a good idea on paper.
The Brussels project understands these places as part of a broader infrastructure. It draws attention not only to supply chains, but also to cultural ties and migration. Food shops, gardens, canteens and street stalls tell stories of how different communities use and transform the city. This is a productive perspective: it makes clear that urban food provision does not take place exclusively in large halls and central distribution centres. At the same time, artistic investigation is no substitute for an assessment of how affordable, reliable or environmentally sound a particular food supply system is.
A Berlin market hall as a test case
Kreuzberg offers a German comparison. Markthalle IX, now known as Markthalle Neun, opened in 1891. It was part of a Berlin market hall programme intended to improve food provision for a rapidly growing population. Extending across several courtyards, the complex, with its sawtooth roofs, daylight and wide passageways, was no decorative market building: goods traffic, refrigeration, water and hygiene were all part of the architectural brief. The hall thus became an example of how a city translates food provision into architecture.
Its history also shows, however, that such a function is not automatically secured for the long term. Competition from supermarkets and changes in the neighbourhood took their toll on the hall; at times, it faced closure. In 2010, a sale to a prospective buyer with plans for a supermarket was halted. Instead, a project group won the bid with a proposal for small-scale retail alongside cultural and social uses. Today, the hall combines retail, food production and events. This is a tangible mix of uses, but not proof that all the competing demands of local food provision, visitor activity and financial viability have been resolved.
From individual site to network
The question extends beyond individual market halls. Berlin’s food strategy treats food as an issue spanning the environment, social policy, health and urban planning. Its areas of action include fostering lively, productive neighbourhoods; support is also envisaged for so-called LebensMittelPunkte. These are approaches intended to connect food provision more closely with communal activities in the neighbourhood. The crucial questions remain whether suitable spaces are available, who runs them and what ongoing costs they entail. Without these prerequisites, a social ambition does not yet amount to robust infrastructure.
Here lies the architectural significance of the Brussels event: it brings the everyday, often overlooked fabric of food provision into focus at the scale of the city. Not every district needs a market hall. Yet every neighbourhood depends on how food comes in and waste goes out, where people can shop and which places they can use together. Urban planning that addresses these questions only as an afterthought leaves important spaces to chance. Planning for food provision therefore means building not just for the next shopping trip, but also shaping the conditions for living together.
Original reviewed by the editors · 26 October 2026
