Today in 2020, the city of Rotterdam is highly dependent on food-production

outside of it’s municipality borders. For instance, tons of fruits are being shipped for

months before before arriving in the Fruit Harbour Rotterdam.

From the 502 ton of grains, 333 ton of vegetables and 252 ton of meat that the 7.000

residents in Oud-Mathenesse are consuming annually (wateetnederland.nl) only 5%

is produced in the Rotterdam Region itself (Metabolic, Circular Rotterdam 2019).

Our food is part of a complex transportation chain. Starting from production and

oversea distribution, storage, logistics to retail until it gets to the consumer and on

our plate. The rising carbon tax will become an important game changer in this

system: It makes a price difference for every item we are consuming depending on

the amount of carbon dioxide emission it creates. But with the carbon tax the

taxation on work is getting lower. That means producing food in cities becomes

more affordable.

How will our future shopping list look like?

Food District Oud-Mathenesse is a research on how the global food-system

functions today to design a self-sufficient and local approach for the city of the

future. The Design is operating in different scale levels, from local bottom-up

initiatives to neighbourhood-wide interventions.