Using foursquare check-ins the company was able to create a comprehensive map of daily urban ebb and flow within some of the world's cities. By categorizing the check-ins, the valuable information shows activity within the city core, and most pertinent to foodtrucks- the massive volume of downtown workers eating lunch. This is important as it shows the increased demand for food services at lunchtime and the temporality of this demand. It's also important to note that opposed to dinner demand, food related checkins were more concentrated, spanning only a few hrs as opposed to several. 

New York City

San Francisco

Tokyo

London

All of the GIFs compare the two busiest times for food check-ins, usually around 11am-12pm and then 7pm-8pm. Food related check-ins are green, and one can easily note the high concentration of green during the peak lunchtime. 

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 2.5 billion people eat street food worldwide per day. Due to this fact, the organization has put a lot of time into developing guidelines for policy and planning to accommodate these vendors worldwide. One of these documents is the Guideline Action Plan for Street Foods.

The plan calls for recognition that the informal street sector has a legitimate place in a city and that the city's infrastructure and facilities should be managed and developed so that street food and the orderly life of the can coexist and even support each other. One of my main goals is to promote cities to provide better infrastructure for temporary food services so it's great that the FAO has the same goals and has set up a framework to achieve that.

Some of the main guidelines from the report were:

-Ensure that street vendors be issued operation licenses, which may specify the food, location and time frame of operations
-Update national food laws, as street food may not be addressed as it is a newer phenomenon
-Utilize municipal law to create localized solutions
-Train food vendors and inspectors, and educating customers
-Provide basic necessities if possible such as water, waste disposal, space and electricity
-Use pilot projects on a local level before implementing it nationally


Exerts from Perspectives and Guidelines on Food Legislation: With a New Model Food Law

"If you want to seed a place with activity, put food in it." 

In my research I came across the mentions of William H. Whyte's The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (Both a book and film) as a great resource for guidelines to design public spaces specifically for eating lunch. The film is a first hand account of observations made in downtown Manhattan of people interacting with public spaces and with each other. Although the film is over 20 years old, the principles still apply and the movie was really informative- especially in it's food section.

Whyte says that if you want to seed a place with activity, you should put food in it. He praises food carts and temporary lunchtime food services as rendez-vous points, and gossip stations, fuelling social interaction. He recounts the wildfire effect of the carts, as one popped up, others quickly followed suit. When people saw other people eating at the carts, they too joined in and as the number of carts rose, so did the demand for them.

Although foodtrucks weren't directly mentioned, as at that time they weren't the main means of temporary urban food facilities, his theories about food carts and lunchtime only cafes are extremely applicable as they serve the same function. He talks of how the carts started out as obstructions, but then became amenities. When this perception shift occurred many public places brought in supporting infrastructure such as tables, chairs and umbrellas. These informal foodcarts became part of a more formal structure and we then able to better serve their patrons.

Whyte gave a great overview of food's relationship with urban public spaces and expressed how they are a vibrant part of the social fabric. He coined the term triangulation- the ability of a space to bring people together, one of foodtruck's greatest strengths as a part of the urban community.

Starting on this journey to analyze and improve the whole foodtruck system leaves me starting in a rough spot where the number of questions I have about the subject greatly outweighs my knowledge. Through my research in the next couple of weeks I hope to answer lots of these questions and use this knowledge to identify problem areas that I can concentrate on to create solutions. The broad research subjects I'm looking into in anthropology, landscape architecture, urban planning, transportation design and food services should point me in the right direction (or at least a few useful ones).