This is an interesting talk on how food shapes our cities from Architect Carolyn Steel. The prime example is London where specific areas are named after the food product most common to the area. For example Bread Street and Poultry Street. She traces the routes different types of food take to their destinations within cities, and how that has shaped the ways cities are laid out.

There are several interesting stats including 1/3 of the world’s grain supply is fed to animals to feed us, and meat that we eat has to eat 10 times as much grain in order to provide us with the same amount of nutrients had we eaten the grain ourselves. As is the case with all TED Talks, this one is quite thought provoking. It makes you think about how truly remarkable it is that a city of a million people like Calgary can have enough food shipped to it daily to essentially feed 3 million meals a day.