Located in the Sonoran Desert, Tucson has the longest agricultural history of any city in the United States of America. It has a 300-year tradition of vineyards, orchards, and livestock ranching that have forged the wide array of the local heritage foods, a source of identity and vitality for the local population of 1 million inhabitants. The distinctive cuisine of Tucson has developed from a culturally layered history, a variety of heri tage food ingredients, and a continuity of traditional food preparation techniques. To maintain its thriving culinary sector, the city focuses particularly on innovative programmes and regulations for food security and sustainable local food production and distribution.
Numerous farmers’ markets and more than two dozen annual food festivals, fairs, and tastings occur year- round and offer tastes of the region’s specialities and food traditions. Often multidisciplinary, an event such as the Tucson Meet Yourself showcases performances of music, crafts and gastronomy, and attracts more than 100,000 participants each year. In addition, a thriving contemporary culinary scene is led by award-winning chefs and independently owned restaurants creating traditional and contemporary dishes using local foods, and is celebrated by lm and book festivals.
Tucson is undoubtedly a model of a gastronomy- based economy. It has however intensified actions toward using gastronomy as a key engine to achieve sustainable urban development. Building community gardens for public housing is just one of the many projects aiming to revise the city’s zoning regulations and remove barriers for urban food production and local food sales. The popular project saw the creation of home and community gardens, urban farms, greenhouses, farmers’ markets and small animal husbandry in residential areas.
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Contribution to the network
As a Creative City of Gastronomy, Tucson envisages:
pls provide links to examples
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establishing the Center for Food Justice, Security, and Innovation aimed to increase access to healthy foods, improve sustainable local food production and distribution, and expand job opportunities in food industry
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nurturing cross-cutting approaches by engaging Creative Cities of Gastronomy and Literature to the Food & Farm Writing and Literature International Forum, focusing on the promotion of consumption of healthy foods
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cooperating with other Creative Cities of Gastronomy on developing resources and strategies for conserving and disseminating heritage crop varieties, as well as promoting the use of culturally-appropriate, nutritious, regional foods
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exchanging best practices on how to support artisanal local producers, the development of cooperatives and public markets, urban food production, conservation, and distribution
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Facts and figures
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Area:
27.28km2
Inhabitants:
City 30’000
Temperature:
ø January °C -13
ø July °C 14.3
Certifications:
Designated Unesco Creative City since 2011
Sweden’s Food Capital 2011
Sweden’s Best Climate City Award 2010
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Host of the Unesco Networks 10th Annual Meeting in September 2016
Participant of Erasmus+ project “Tasting Schools”
What’s on?
pls provide with events related to food. picture, date, short description and links
Get the latest information on www.tucson.cityofgastronomy.org
Burgos Food Event
find more information here…
Fooddesign 2018
Date
The Festival provides you with
Phuket Event
October 2018
A food festival filled with delicacies from …
About Jeojun
Contact
Jonathan Mabry
Historic Preservation Principal Planner
pls supply with facebook, linkedin, twitter or google+ account links
and a picture pls, thank you
Useful links
Creative City of Tucson
Tuscon Foodie
more?? i.ex. festival sites, links to ongoing projekts, facebook or similar