Over the last 40 years, evidence has built up about the food system’s reliance on the natural world. That relationship has been generally exploitative. The food system literally mines the environment, and also snatches defeat out of the jaws of victory by overproducing and maldistributing food. In Europe, food is relatively heavily legislated, and consciousness about the issues has increased, as have appeals to behaviour change. Yet now we know that policy and practice have not responded either fast or deeply enough. Part of the reason for this failure to integrate policy with evidence has been that planning has become an enemy rather than friend. Planning is perceived as state interference, not a lever for the public good. In this lecture I will argue that a new framework of thinking about food is needed, requiring simultaneous action on four levels of existence: the material world of physical things and natural infrastructure; the bio-physiological world of bodies, plants, animals; the cultural world of consciousness and life space; and the social world of human interaction. Faced by such complexity, is planning too blunt an instrument? What could shift all these in the necessary configuration for planetary and societal success? --------------------------------Carolyn Steel Architect, Lecturer and Writer, Kilburn Nightingale Architects. Food, Cities and Sitopia: using food as a design tool to reshape how we live. Abstract Food is mankind's most vital shared commodity, inextricably woven into our social and physical structures and relationships. What, how and with whom weFood is mankind's most vital shared commodity, inextricably woven into our social and physical structures and relationships. What, how and with whom we