Over the past year, Open House New York’s The Final Mile has explored the architecture of New York City’s food system. From the markets of the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center to the food halls of Brooklyn, The Final Mile has explored how the spaces in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed have helped shape the city and our experiences of it.

Through these public programs, a chorus of voices has made it clear that our food system is challenged from many sides. New York’s principle food hub at Hunts Point, supplying 60% of the city’s produce and 50% of its meat and fish, sits in a 100-year floodplain, threatened by increasingly extreme weather and rising sea levels. Long-standing inequities within the system continue to oversupply some neighborhoods while limiting access to basic foods in others. With the city’s population expected to grow by one million people by 2030, how can we adapt and expand our current food infrastructures in ways that catalyze larger, more fundamental changes?

As The Final Mile draws to a close, Open House New York invites you to join us for a discussion about where the city’s food system is today, and what choices we need to make to design and build a better food system for the future.

Panelists:
Kathleen Bakewell, Principal, Brook Farm Group and Founder and Executive Director, Biocities
Carolyn Dimitri, Director, Food Studies PhD Program, New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
Ray Figueroa, President, New York City Community Garden Coalition
Adam Lubinsky, Principal, WXY architecture + urban design
Moderated by Gregory Wessner, Executive Director, Open House New York