Feeding the metropolis: exploring ways to map food procurement in Barcelona

Abstract

This article presents some graphic explorations to represent urban food procurement in Barcelona, a metropolis characterised by a unique system based on 90 public market halls and 76 weekly open-air markets that allow access to groceries and catalyse retail and proximity services around them. The research is part of a larger investigation that sustains the hypothesis that urban form is closely related to food supply systems so that the way in which a city feeds its citizens constitutes a unique ‘foodprint’, related to its compactness, density, diversity and equity.