About Robert Lemon:

rdlemon@gmail.com

Robert Lemon is a former lecturer at UC Berkeley in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and most recently was a visiting professor at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies and the Geography Institute at Heidelberg University.  An accomplished filmmaker, Robert also holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin. His work merges visual arts with geographic theory to create new ways of experiencing knowledge and to bridge social differences. His academic research focuses on spatial practices and their patterns as a cultural landscape. Much of his research examines how people experience and transform the built environment through culinary practices. Currently he is editing his dissertation “Taco Truck Urban Topographies: The Spatial Politics of Eating ‘Out’ in the US City” for a book publication. The manuscript details the ways in which Mexican immigrant owned and operated taco trucks have affected the social, political, and physical dimensions of American cities. His movie Transfusión illustrates such processes in Columbus, Ohio and elucidates how people creatively reimagine a sense of place. Robert is also an enthusiastic lecturer and dedicated teacher. He offers a wide range of courses on urban geography, the cultural geography of food, the American cultural landscape, as well as filmmaking as a geographic method. Additionally, he is often invited to lecture on food geography and has given numerous international departmental talks about how culinary practices shape urban space.

Articles by the author:

Constructing a Farm-to-Fable

Posted on by Robert Lemon

Charlotte Biltekoff in a recent blog entry notes, “The foodworld is abuzz with the promise of transparency.” The premise is that new trends in food marketing better inform consumers about where and how their food is produced. And as Biltekoff considers, transparency creates further complexity. Certainly, “eating local” similarly supports the notion of transparency in the food system. My objective here is to examine how urban branding around “eating local” shapes the urban landscape. I focus on the city of Sacramento, California to illustrate the ways in which the city council and restaurateurs tacitly employ the notion of food transparency to upgrade the urban landscape to accrue capital. In 2013, Mayor Kevin Johnson declared Sacramento “America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital.” The marketing…

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