The cradle of the city: the environmental imprint of Brussels and its hinterland in the High Middle Ages

Abstract

As a popular assumption, the cities are considered to exert a major impact on their hinterland. In fact, little is known about this imprint on the earlier period. This paper will thus try to delineate as far as possible urban and rural contributions to the imprint by using a cause and effect analysis. The paper argues that the birth of second generation cities like Brussels is the result of a demographic and economic process occurring in the rural environment. Above all in a second phase, once the process of human concentration within the city initiated and the town became a market center and a consumer power, rural developments changed under the urban imprint: at that moment the city imposed a certain spatial structure on the rural system with intensive and high profitability cultures replacing extensive practices.

Localising the nitrogen imprint of the Paris food supply: the potential of organic farming and changes in human diet

“…The agricultural development in the city hinterland as well as the construction of large transport infrastructures has been largely dictated by the requirements of urban food markets (Keene, 2011;Charruadas, 2011;Billen et al, 2011). Because cities consume most of the final products of agriculture and dictate its specialisation and location, urbanisation is a major driver of the human perturbation of the nitrogen cycle (Svirejeva-Hopkins and Reis, 2011).…”

Planning for FEWsheds: The Role of Planning in Integrating and Strengthening Food, Energy and Water Systems

“…While a foodshed denotes the draw of food resources to a community, “foodprint” studies assess the total land needed to feed the population in a given city based on existing diets (Wackernagel and Rees 1998). From these studies, researchers have concluded that peri-urban farms cannot fully support most urban populations (Charruadas 2012; Cowell and Parkinson 2003; Desjardins, MacRae and Schumilas 2010; Gerbens-Leenes and Nonhebel 2002; Giombolini et al 2011; Johansson 2008; Swaney et al 2012). A limitation to such studies is a narrow definition of food-producing lands, often excluding urban and suburban plots, fisheries or hunting and gathering options (Horst and Gaolach 2015).…”

Avenues into Food Planning: A Review of Scholarly Food System Research

“…A few studies look at urban metabolism and foodshed dynamics historically as consumption patterns and land-uses change (Charruadas 2011). While New York City outgrew state-produced agriculture in the 1850s and now only 2.2% of the City’s food demand would be met by in-state sources (Peters et al 2009b; Swaney et al 2011), Paris has a thousand-year history of dependence on its local foodshed and meets half of its modern food demand from sources within 200 km of the city (Atkins 2007; Barles 2007; Billen et al 2009, Billen 2011).…”