Filed under: videos | Tags: Food, Food Distribution Centers, Hunts Point, New York City, Project for Public Spaces, video
Well its not really new (yet), but as part of a first time 1 million dollar marketing campaign culminating in the recent launch of a new website, New York City’s Hunt’s Point Terminal Market has officially been (re)branded. Announced earlier last month, the wholesale market’s campaign will attempt to reintroduce and re-frame the market to the city, to the region, and to the world.
The timing of this campaign comes as no surprise as the wholesale market’s facilities and its business have been deteriorating ever since it moved to Hunt’s Point after abandoning Washington Market (previously on the former World Trade Center site) in 1962. While the current spacious 60 acre site in the south Bronx has granted the market larger facilities, quicker access to regional and global transportation networks, and greater volumes of produce exchange, the siting of the market in a poor and industrial neighborhood at the cities hinterlands has possibly led to a loss of public visibility and support.
With the exception of a few modest news clips around holiday feast seasons, the only real press the market has ever gotten was the uncovering of a decade-long fraud scandal where USDA inspectors were being bribed to cheat the farmers supplying the market.
In addition to this bad press the market has been requesting funding to go ahead with facilities improvement that have yet to be granted by city (which leases the market property) state, or federal governments. Things have gotten so bad that as recently as 2008, there was speculation that the market might leave the city and reestablish itself in New Jersey. The nearly 50 year-old facility is congested, out of date, and struggles to comply with modern cold-chain standards. Wholesale fresh food markets, such as Hunt’s Point, have been under pressure for decades as expanding supermarket and hypermarket corporations such as Tesco, Walmart, and Kroger have began dominating the food system and rapidly consolidating, innovating, and automating the distribution process. In addition to competition from vertically integrated supermarkets, the new soon to open 700,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market (for photos see this earlier post) is expected to further compete with Hunt’s Point for business. Clearly the pressure is on, and for now this marketing campaign is the market’s most achievable answer.
Website screenshot:
The “New” Hunts Point Produce Market and My Thesis
From the beginning of my thesis research Hunts Point has always been a potential site. Although I have delayed detailed site analysis, the site has been the door into my understanding of fresh food logistics. When I first discovered it in a post on Mexico City’s produce market in Nicola Twilley’s blog edible geography, I was amazed that such a massive and essential facility in the daily life of New York City could exist unnoticed by its citizens… this unnoticing is of course the work of logistics (see this earlier post). Upon further research over the summer it was evident that the market’s blurred public/private condition has led to poor funding and eventual facility deterioration. Given my architectural knowledge of the historic role of public market buildings in civic life, I could not help but wonder how this market plays a role in that lineage. When did the market become a neglected logistical space? What caused this recent transition and what futures might it hypothesize.
I suppose my innitial instincts were not misplaced. Indeed Hunt’s Point has an image problem (for better or worse image is half of the architectural problem), and if it is going to survive and prosper along with the fresh food system of New York, it needs revamping. While much of this revamping will occur through policy and economics, ultimately the built facilities that these forces are manifested in will play a critical role in the markets evolution and success.
Although I have been expecting the Hunts Point Produce Market’s new marketing campaign for some time, I am still not entirely sure how to react to it in the context of my project. Since the marketing campaign calls upon the citizens of New York City (the public) and the farmers and produce distributors from around the world to come out to the market, I wonder how a facility that was not designed to engage the public will perform. Perhaps this focuses my thesis on further analysis of the differences between public architecture and logistical architecture, spaces designed for people and spaces designed for commodities.
A more pessimistic response to the marketing campaign would be to say the whistle has been blown… here I have been sitting on one of New York City’s best kept secrets and now its out. In addition to the new website, commercials advertising the market will be played on cable throughout the tri-state area. Soon most New Yorker’s will at least know of Hunt’s Point’s existence. Since I will not be fully analyzing the Hunt’s Point site until next semester, I could take the stance that I showed up late to the party and thus the site has less to offer… less to expose. I am leaning towards the former.
Regardless of whether my eventual design project looks to expose Hunts Point’s role in New York City’s food system, or whether it attempts to somehow resolve some of the conflicting issues of landscape and building on the site, for now I certainly appreciate the surge of press and video accompanying this new marketing campaign.
Video: 1
This first promotional video created by Erik West for the marketing campaign is by far my favorite. Upbeat and simply visual it certainly glorifies the logistical spectacle of the market. The video also focuses on a critical point… time and programming. Much of the hustle and bustle of logistics takes place in the early morning hours. While goods are moved throughout the day, the early morning peak is intended to allow for stores and restaurants to be stocked throughout the day.
Video: 2
This second promotional video by Erik West focuses more on the perspective of retailers who buy their product (fruits and vegetables) from Hunts Point.
Video: 3
The third promotional video is more lengthy and comprehensive with narration by the market’s new TV spokesperson Tony Tantillo.
Filed under: Interview | Tags: Central New York Regional Farmers Market, Food, Food Distribution Centers, Hunts Point, Interview, Markets, New York City
http://media.syracuse.com/news/photo/2009-07-23-jb-market9jpg-e9dc17385deb7758.jpg
As my thesis begins to focus on the spaces of food logistics, I have become increasingly aware of such spaces here in Syracuse, New York. Beyond Wegman’s grocery stores and various farmers markets, Syracuse’s grand space of food is the Central New York Regional Market (CNYRM). This 60 acre site (located on Hiawatha Blvd. and adjacent to the Mall and Regional Transportation Center) is the primary produce food hub in Upstate, New York. The combination of wholesale (for distributors) and retail (for consumers) sales, facility upgrades, a on site restaurants/commons, and community engagement have led this market to be considered one of the more successful in the country, and one of the larger ones in respect of the scale of its context. The market oversees the sales of nearly $70 million a year in farm products and on public market days draws in crowds of up to 26,000 people. I headed up to the market to meet its Executive Director, Ben Vitale. You can read more about Mr. Vitale and the growth of the market under his leadership in this article in the Country Folks weekly farm newspaper.
Additionally Mr. Vitale is the current President of the National Association of Produce Market Managers (NAPMM). As the title implies this organization comprises the managers of all the major food markets in the United States. Collectively these produce markets are hubs of our national/global food system. In addition to running the logistics of these food markets, NAPMM and Mr. Vitale work closely with goverment and policy agencies (such as USDA) in managing our countries food system.
Mr. Vitale and I talked informally for over an hour about the Central New York Regional Market, our countries food system, global food trends, and the different types of markets and their possibilities in my thesis. Below is a transcribed version of some of my more specific question and his answers.
Q+A:
Nate Wooten: The Central New York Regional Market has been incredibly successful at maintaining both buyers and sellers, with peaks of 40,000 people per week, and over 400 separate stalls, under your leadership what role have facility expansions and upgrades had on the success of the market?
Ben Vitale: The market went through some really bad times in the 70′s, 80′s, and early 90′s, and when we did the renovation project here I guess the timing was pretty good. The market was at its lowest point, when I came here in ’97, if you take a look at the pictures downstairs, I mean is was in shambles. So we got an influx of money and put roofs on the place and did a lot of upgrading to the facility. And at the time people were getting more involved and wanting to know where there food was coming from, farmers markets became more popular, so it was really good timing that we improved the facilities. We had a change in management, we had a change in society, and all those things came together. This place is really- if you look at markets across the county- this is one that really sticks out.
NW: Also, do you think that part of the success is the multiple functions of the market (wholesale and retail)?
BV: That is what makes us financially successful. When we first opened the commons, I had fifteen different people come. They wanted to look at it and copy it some other place. They would say “well is it viable?” By itself no; you know, are our wholesale building viable, not by themselves, probably not. I can guarantee you our retail markets aren’t viable by themselves because it is very expensive to run a farmer’s market with the type of facility we run, with buildings, and all the services we provide. What makes us successful is the combination of everything.
NW: Considering the variety of scales in which food systems operate, and a lot of the environmental concerns and nutrition concerns, what trends do you see developing in the food industry and where would you like to see it go?
BV: I’ve never been a supporter of organic, because its a perception more than its a fact. For the last five years Ive been telling everybody organic is a fad, local is the real thing. People can identify whats local whats regional, that will be around for a long time… Where I’m excited and the thing that I like right now is the whole movement toward local and regional and just really getting back to what the whole organic thing started on: where is your food grown and how is it grown. I think thats where we’ve been in the last couple of years and I think thats gonna be our future for a while.
BV: Then it goes to the next level with markets like this. One of the things Ive been working on with the national sub-comittee with the USDA, the Wallace Center, and the Project for Public Spaces is regional food hubs. The USDA and our current administration would like to develop these regional food hubs a lot more. I was just in Washington, and two weeks ago I did a presentation on what we do here in the market (which is considered to be a regional food hub). I just keep beating it in their heads, its not a new concept.
NW: As part of the National Association of Produce Market Managers, what opportunities and impacts can you have on actual food policy?
BV: NAPMM has been around since the 40′s, 60-some years, and were completely volunteer. We have one paid employee that does some secretarial work for us part time. The USDA use to work with us quite a bit, but the policy in Washington the last 20 years shifted away from wholesale terminal markets, markets like us, and shifted more to the tailgate markets (farmers markets). So we lost contact with the USDA over the years, and my focus as president this year was to rebuild the relationship with the USDA and another good organization United Fresh. United Fresh is mostly made up of members that are wholesalers and distributors, even the Ciscos are part of that. Even the fast food places like McDonald’s are part of United Fresh.
BV: When I was in Washington a couple of weeks ago and was doing the presentation on the food hubs, we were also meeting with our congressmen and representatives in Washington to talk about policy regarding produce and the food industry. Thats really the way we can make the most influence by participating in those types of things. Also, by me working directly with the USDA, they get a sense of whats going on out there in the real world, sometimes in Washington they dont know whats going on out there. For instance they’d seen pictures of this market but they didn’t really know what we do. When I was giving them the presentation on the market they were like: “holy cow, we didnt realize you were doing all that stuff.” Yeah, you want to talk about food hubs, but its happening out there.
NW: Early you mentioned the Project for Public Space, this concept is one of the main interest in this thesis: exploring markets as public spaces. I’m interested in the history of markets as public space, I interested in urban food economies, and I see so many positive opportunities in the exchange of food. More specifically I am interested in wholesale markets as part of our public infrastructure, wholesale markets like Hunt’s Point in New York. What potential do you see for these markets becoming more public?
BV: Well they dont want you there. You’re gonna be in the way. You’re gonna see things that they don’t want people to see. Its interesting the markets in this country, though we’ve developed over the years, were almost behind the times compared to Europe. Food safety and cleanliness are behind the times here. We’re so worried about traceability; who cares about tracing were you got sick, Im more worried about making sure no one gets sick in the first place. Us American’s, thats the way we work. Our markets are filthy compared to the European markets, this market’s not.
NW: Well European markets are more thoroughly designed architecturally and spatially to be places that people want to go.
BV: Well your talking about retail markets, thats the trouble. When you go to a wholesale market its completely different. Their wholesale markets exclude the public because they probably dont want people there either. I mean, have seen you anything about the 7th Street Market in Los Angeles with the rats running all over and people using the bathroom all over (watch the nbc hidden camera report here). This market use to be that way back in the bad days. Im not saying this stuff goes on everywhere, but the Hunt’s Point Market is just so congested and you know there are things going on there that you dont want people to know. Yet, they are doing such an important task.
NW: That contradiction and the differences between retail and wholesale is really what my research is getting at right now. From what I can tell retail alligns more with sustainable and local food movements while the wholesale markets are more unsustainable and part of the global food system.
BV: Well you have to have both. If people want a choice you have to have both. Thats one of the reasons our market, a state authority, doesn’t limit trade. We have out-of-state dealers, we have New York state dealers, we have farmers, we have everything. We don’t limit anything. But, were the decision is made is what choices the customers have. At one time there was a rule here that if there were local tomatoes at the retail market no one could sell any other tomatoes. And ok, thats great for the local farmer, which 75% of our board is made up of, but what choice does that give to the consumer. So in the end of October when all the tomatoes start freezing, some farmer is gonna pick these bad tomatoes and the customer cant have the choice to have a better tomato.
NW: Then there’s the concept of food sheds and how much land it requires to feed our cities in a local manner. Look at greater New York, its huge, there just isn’t enough agricultural land nearby. And then there are places like Phoenix and remote cities way up north, were they cant grow much food, but people live there, cities have been built there. You’re not going to reorganize the entire urban population.
BV: The way society is now we have really learned to have choices, and for us not to have choices isn’t going be the answer anymore. I keep talking about the educated consumer. Something that bothers me here in Syracuse is we have an opportunity to grow so much more than we already are. Within an 8 hour drive, if you think of all the populations we cant get to I wonder why we aren’t bigger and better than we already are. We got the thru-way, interstate 81, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston all just a few hours away.
NW: Well also mixed in this landscape are a lot of farms. When I first came up here I wasn’t aware of all this history and the productivity of the upstate.
BV: Yeah, but instead we’re going the other way. The farmer’s are planting less. Farmers are going out of business. Its just sad.
NW: Let’s finish by trying to address some questions related directly to my thesis project. I am hoping to start looking at the global, regional, and local food system–from production to distribution to consumption–and what role architecture plays in it. From farm barns, to wholesale market sheds, to kitchens, food has some significant typological and spatial impacts. More specifically I want to examine and propose ways in which a food hub like Hunt’s Point can become more public. With more funding and attention coming to the market I see it as an opportunity to use Hunt’s Point as a place for public education that could be more of a market hybrid like the market here in Syracuse. This is at least my initial plan, more of an urban design project perhaps.
NW: Right now the city has a vision plan for the Hunt’s Point Market site that includes some public things like a waterfront park or boardwalk, but the market buildings are this vast truck-filled industrial wasteland. I guess I am also interested in challenging this vision plans modest suggestions. I don’t think it deals with the real issues. I see the market as having so much more potential. You use the term ‘food hub’ but maybe it could be more like a ‘food campus’- a place where the broad realm of food is brought to the publics attention as education and entertainment.
BV: Well I guess there’s potential, but then I worry about the safety concerns and the issues of the massive amount of trucks that currently have to go in and out of there. If you are going be bringing the public there you’re probably going to have to separate them in some way. I don’t know the current plans for the market exactly, but I know the facility use to look more like an airport, with different layers of use. You know, space is so valuable in New York, and if you start spreading it all out one level, I don’t know if you’d have enough room. J. R. McIntyre, the manager there now, he actually oversaw the construction of the Atlanta airport, so that his background. So they have all the different trucks delivering on all the different concourses. When you think about it they are getting twice as much in the same amount of space. I guess my issue again is how you separate the two enough to be successful, safe, and beneficial to both. Its an issue of logistics.
Photos of the Central New York Regional Market provided by the Central New York Regional Market Authority:
Wholesale/Dealers Shed: ca. 1940
Central New York Regional Market: 1938
Central New York Regional Market: 1996
Central New York Regional Market: post renovation
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Abstract, Ecological Urbanism, Food, Food Distribution Centers, New York City
On the left of my blog you will find a new menu entitled “A Crisis City Blog”. Here you can access the Crisis City website to which this blog belongs, the Crisis City Manifesto, and my personal Thesis Abstracts. Below you will find the first version of my thesis abstract. Still rather vague, it is a first pass at defining the contention and site for which my thesis project will operate. I had several other ideas including, a monument tosuperuse (architectural resuse), a museum of intermodal transit to be located at LA’s Alameda Trench, and Options for the People of Male (a city of 100,000 in the Maldive Atolls which is sure to go under water). I would appreciate any feedback you might give.
A pdf version can be viewed here: Nkwooten_Thesis_Abstract_submittal_1
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Park(ing) Day
With some luck and a couple of spontaneous “yes”‘s I was able to participate in several publicly engaging events this weekend. First was Park(ing) Day, an internationally annual event in which people convert metered parking spaces into temporary parks and public spaces for a day. The event inspires barbecuers, artists, and environmentalists, many of which support the event for its anti-car and pro-pedestrian undertones. The event has grown from San Fransisco to the globe, and as of last Friday, September 17 its participants included Syracuse University architecture students (including several from Crisis City). Our particular event and park were mostly organized and designed by Crisis City student Gabriella Morrone (for images of the the design and construction click here). I aided in the construction to a small extent, but mostly enjoyed hanging out in the park, enjoying a sunny day in the city, and engaging with visitors and workers in downtown Syracuse. Most passer-bys asked what we were doing, but as we explained that we were ‘participating to claim the street as pedestrian public space’, I was surprised so many people were so reactionary. While many people simply celebrated our cause, many people, asked, “What about businesses”, “where will we park”, “why does this matter?” The most recurrent negative reaction was a concern for business and visitors to downtown. It became clear that many people had a different attitude toward public space than I did, and although our aim was the same, simply advocating ‘public space’ is banal and open to misinterpretation. Throughout the day it became a challenge to offer my opinions on what public space meant, and to offer examples of positive results of public space initiatives (including economic). The fact that my viewpoints about something I see as generally critical as public space were not congruent with that of the urban citizen, I began to speculate on the essentially of public engagement. How can I design public space without considering the publics connotations towards it. The architect must engage with the city to correctly build in the city.
Sukkah City
In addition to Park(ing) Day, I was also given the opportunity to participate in the construction of Peter Sagar’s Time/Timeless Sukkah that was part of New York City’s Sukkah City competition. Peter, an architecture student in the UK had gotten in touch with a friend of mine living willow designer, Bonnie Gale (who Peter had chosen to pre-construct his willow roof), and she later got in touch with myself and fellow Crisis City members Timothy Gale and Dennis Harvey. We headed into the city Saturday and met Peter in New York that evening to begin assembling and finishing constructing his Sukkah on the Union Square site. Peter had began construction early that week with a carpenter named Josh in a studio space in Brooklyn. After the pieces that had been pre-constructed were delivered to the site, we worked through the night along with the 11 other Sukkah finalists, finishing to a crowd that morning at 9:00 am. Beyond the benifits of shared knowledge and experiences between Peter, Josh, Timothy, Dennis, and myself, building a hut in Union Square through a Saturday night and a Sunday morning, brought engagement with a diverse and inquisitive audience. Highlighted by spot lights, cranes, and police tape, the construction of the Sukkah’s initially brought a large crowd. As people realized we werent movie stars and they were not going to be on television, the crowds became more manageable and we began to have really authentic and generative conversations with New Yorker’s. Given the Sukkah’s role in Jewish tradition, many people stopped by with religious interests, but a majority of inquirers were designers, artists, and curious citizens. Although the promises to come back in the morning became less reliable as the morning approached and peoples interest became more diluted, I did recognize many faces the next morning. Working through the night with Peter was fun, it was tough, but the reaction from the crowd of visitors the next day was truly inspiring. Every architect wants to build something in New York City because of the cities rich architectural legacy but also because of the energy of its citizenry. Experiencing this vicariously through Peter and authentically through my own role in the projects realization was a priceless experience. Peter’s design was beautiful on paper, but seeing it realized and occupied towards such joy and and inspiration reminded me of the effect of architecture and the spiritual importance of beauty. There was also a more practical exchange based on the common material of plywood in which the structure was constructed. Many DIY’ers would simply ask us questions about detailing and structure. I taught at least 10 people how to sandwich wood without showing nails or screws. Architecture and art existing in or towards public space is one of the most valuable ways to use design towards positive change. Whether a park, an occupied building, or simply a rendering, architecture must have its aim at public engagement. Only then is it architecture, only this is it real.
The completed Sukkah City: Sunday morning September 20 at 10:00 am
Filed under: Seeking | Tags: Food, Food Distribution Centers, New York City
Filed under: Links, Uncategorized, videos | Tags: London, New York City, San Francisco, Urban, Vancouver, video
Tilt shift photography utilizes a tilt-shift lens that sits off center of the sensor plane producing photos with an extremely skewed depth-of field. When these blurred photos are strung together in a high-speed time-lapse fashion, the effect is a miniaturization of reality.
The tilt-shift effect demonstrated in these videos of cities, allows for an unusual reading of city. The depth-of-field effect allows a unique focus that combined with time-lapse focuses on the micro movements of people and vehicles in a still macro built environment.
The miniaturization of reality allows the everyday city to be re-imagined.
New York
London
Vancouver
San Francisco
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alexandria, Los Angeles, New York City, Non-Urban, Rotterdam, Urban
“Cities are like armies“
Port of Singapore
Nazi rally in Nuremberg
To me this comparison seems intuitive. Perhaps it is too obvious, but I could hardly find a single mentioning of it in the internet. A google search of “cities are like armies” only returned two sources. One was from Frederic Harrison’s 1918 “On Society” in which he references French philosopher Augustus Comte who believed that industrial cities were like army camps. The second was from Paul Glover, the founder of the Philly Orchard Project who speaks about how cities have grown too far from there resources. I agree with them both.
The comparison between cities and armies begins with logistics. The term logistics (one of the fundamental concerns of this urban blog) originates from the Roman”Logistikas”. The logistikas were responsible for supplying and managing the resources of the different Roman legions. Like cities today, the legions, constantly in motion, relied on well calculated logistics to manage water, food, dwelling, transportation, and tools to provide order so that the army could achieve its assigned goal. No matter where a legion needed to go to complete its task, these ‘essential life resources’ (ELR’s) had to be made available for the army to have any success. So too the city, often founded for reasons beyond ELR’s has to find ways of sustaining the daily lives of its inhabitants. In this sense logistics are seen as secondary. They are the routine things that are kept silent so the primary goal can be focused on and accomplished. Therefor the very notion of logistics is the history of human advancement. Our ability to increasingly sustain our existence more effortlessly is arguably the exact cause of out ‘post animal’ self realization. In this since logistics are vital.
The simile “cities are like armies” can even extend beyond logistics. Cities defined as fixed sites of communal human living presumably first began with the notion of protection/defense. If people amassed together and shared/traded resources they would have an advantage in reserving ELR’s and thus surviving. Although rarely threatened by invasion, protection and perseverance are still of upmost concern to the city. Albeit terrorism, global competition, class wars, or environment ‘disasters’ cities are in a constant state of growth and adaption in order to survive… A constant motion, a constant fight, a constant crisis. Every city is trying to win (whatever that means) but whatever the cause may be logistics are what sustain it.
As the human project continues to polarize human needs and human desires, the logistics of our cities become increasingly critical. As cities swell the logistics of sustaining them become increasingly complex, threatening cities and human civilization. In this climate of crisis if a city wants to persevere, evolving our metaglistical infrastructures will be critical. Water, food, dwelling, transportation, and tools, the essential life resources, form the foundation of our essential LIFE INFRASTRUCTURES. Through researching, redesigning, and rebuilding the metalogitical infrastructures of our urban planet, cities and their inhabitants can thrive. This is the concern of METALOGISTICAL URBANISM.
The first significant project of this blog will be defining the contents minimal scope.
Over the next couple of weeks I will begin by tentatively establishing the basic essential life resources of our cities.
1) Water
California Aqueduct Pumping Station
2) Food
Currently Under construction: MVRDV's Rotterdam Markethall
3) Dwelling
Independence Plaza in Tribeca
4) Transportation
Alameda Corridor running from the Port at Long Beach to the Inland Empire
5) Tools
Bibliotech Alexandria
For each broad resource category there will be a quick introduction and some associated provocations. Please, if moved to do so, challenge these 5 essential resources or suggest other categories.
Spend the next minute thinking about the work that went in to suppling the last water you drank, the last food you ate, the room you are currently in, what got you there, and the electronic device beneath your fingertips. These architectures make up the underworld of the city.
A few weeks ago, walking through the lush suburban landscape of Greenwich, Connecticut (my temporary home), I noticed nearly every mailbox had clipped to it and advertisement for a grocery delivery service. A few days later, looking up and down my street, I again noticed an armature of mailboxes tagged with these cards and coupons. And finally last night my roommates informed me the advertising had intrigued them and they would now be ordering groceries through Fresh Direct.
At first I assumed Fresh Direct was just another Greenwich luxury, however further research quickly altered my false assumption. If you live or associate yourself whatsoever with New York City Fresh Direct may be a common term. Since 2002 Fresh Direct has been delivering fresh food throughout the boroughs. The service has dramatically grown over the past 8 years, and thanks to its expansions last April the company now has a tri-state customer base. Now that food from Fresh Direct is filling my fridge, I figure it is worth a closer look to see the logistics behind this company and its role in feeding the largest and densest urban area in the United States, before I take my first bite.
Nearly as old as the grocery store itself, home delivery is not a new urban phenomenon. What is new is the logistics of internet ordering and synchronized computer regulated delivery. The internet age has seen a variety of online grocery delivery operations emerge and falter: Webvan, Publix Direct, and SimonDelivers to name a few. And while there are still many active and new online grocery delivery start-ups, Fresh Direct is emerging as the new model for success having recently begun turning a profit while slowly expanding.
What interests me most about Fresh Direct is its success in the iconic urbanscape of New York City, its claim to fresh food and sustainable practices, and its opportunistic use of the internet to provide a digitally enhanced informational shopping experience.
The logistics of feeding a city like New York are phenomenal and complex. The distances and effort put into each one of our meals extends far beyond the table. The genius of Fresh Direct is its simplification of this complex system in order to provide customers a seemingly better product. Rather than relying on major food corporations and distribution chains, Fresh Direct is a closed local system (albeit the 300 mile regional scale of New York City). From it’s Long Island City warehouse, Fresh Direct sends out two fleets of trucks, one for rural farm collection and one for local urban distribution. The food comes in, is processed and packaged to order, and sent out to your front door. A win win situation, Fresh Direct is able to offer fresh, local, desired food products, while working with smaller farm suppliers allowing Fresh Direct to call the shots.
A bird’s eye view of Fresh Direct’s 300,000-square-foot warehouse just outside of Manhattan in Brooklyn’s Long Island City. Highlighted below, the warehouse’s close proximity to major transit lines has made it a prime location for the worlds largest electronic billboard.
Although admittedly not perfect, the system advertises itself as sustainable, and in many ways the more customers in New York City it has the more this it is immediately true. While a grocery store may feed 100 people in 100 car trips, Fresh Direct can feed a 100 people with one truck trip. Additionally, the simplicity of the production and distribution system means less wasted food, as supply always equals demand. Unlike grocery stores who must display actual food in substandard environmental conditions until an unknown number of customers choose to buy, Fresh Direct claims to have an item accuracy of nearly 99.9 percent.
Although there is a trust issue with buying your food from the internet, the company is actually utilizing the internet to provide customers with options and information that far surpasses what you can see in a standard produce aisle. Like the netflix of food, the Fresh Direct order database, tells you what people in your area like eat, where the food came from, what its nutritional value is. Possibly most importantly one can compare products in real time. In a few simple clicks you can pinpoint the juice with the least sugar, that is the most organic, and is the most local. Furthermore the company offers recipes that that you can click, enter the serving size, and all the ingredients will be added to your checkout basket automatically.
In many ways Fresh Direct gives the shopper options they have never had before. While simultaneously informing and engaging its customer (there is now even an I-Phone App) Fresh Direct’s longterm effect on gastro-urbanism is still unclear. Certainly Fresh Direct’s successful service is feeding New Yorker’s fresh, healthy, local, food, and this effort should be applauded, but the companies effect on food culture may not be so positive. As the company expands its market towards pre-made meals (even if they are fresh, healthy, and local) the service is increasingly de-prioritizing food. Simply consider that the company was created with the sole purpose of feeding busy New Yorker’s who dont have time to go to the grocery store or market. This premise is inescapable. The subconscious cultural effect of seeing, smelling, touching our food, and developing selection skills has always been essential to human culture and survival. What is at risk with the virtualization of food, and in light of national obesity and fast-food diets, what is to gain?
Screenshot of the recently released Fresh Direct iphone App.
As the world continues to deal with the duality of increases in population, urbanism, and climate change, we will need to continue to reinvent the way we feed our cities. Is Fresh Direct the answer? To some New Yorker’s yes, but to those complaining, of idled smog producing trucks parked in bike lanes, elevators packed with deliverymen and boxes, and piles of wasted packaging, perhaps Fresh Direct should continue chasing perfection. I’m hopeful though. Fresh Direct has committed itself to customer service, and so far the company has shown fluidity in responding to demands and concerns of customers and the public (potential customers).
The box room in Fresh Direct’s warehouse.
A temporary bike lane obstacle. The company pays about $600,000 dollars a year in parking tickets.
This morning I checked out our fridge, excited to have my first Fresh Direct feeding. I cooked up some 70 mile turkey bacon from Long Island, and ate a 2500 mile banana from California. Averaged out it was a 1285 mile breakfast, not so fresh or direct.
I will be attending the New York City book launch for Ecological Urbanism tomorrow evening with my good friend Nilus Klingel at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. In preparations for the event I have been trying to learn more about Ecological Urbanism as an emerging pedagogical project. Through a Harvard GSD blog I came across this telling quite below, where the author responds to her thoughts on the project:
“…to the more cynical, architectural fascination with this new concept has yet another significance: the concept of sustainability gave architecture a new purpose. According to this point of view, sustainability emerged not a moment to soon…just when the profession’s search for meaning (e.g. historicist trends of the late 20th c.) or the egocentrism of the signature designer (e.g., the legacy of modernism) had led to dead ends.” – Panayiota Pyla,” Counter Histories of Sustainability”, Volume #18
Food for 30 million people is distributed from this single site a little smaller than Central Park. New Yorker’s, wonder why you may never have heard of it?
Hunts Point: the epicenter of New York City\’s Food Distribution
