Pop-up food provisioning as a sustainable third space: reshaping eating practices at an inner urban university

Abstract

We examine one innovative response to the social, spatial and environmental sustainability challenges posed by food provisioning and consumption for large-scale organisations—pop-up or mobile food provisioning—focusing on the specific example of a large, inner urban university campus in Melbourne, Australia. Emerging from a larger project examining sustainability and eating practices on campus, this study of pop-ups draws on a multi-method empirical investigation involving ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and digital methods. While the university’s use of pop-ups in this case has been primarily as a flexible, just-in-time way of engaging with the food needs of students during a large-scale campus rebuild, we argue that the mobile and malleable nature of pop-ups may offer a more sustainable way of envisaging eating spaces in urban organisational contexts. Drawing on conceptual frameworks taken from social practice theories and theories of space, the paper conceptualises the hybrid and convivial spaces produced through the bundling of mobile food provisioning practices with the university practices as third spaces of hybrid hospitality and urban commons. We argue that through disrupting and challenging many of the temporal and spatial norms that govern mainstream food provisioning and consumption, these third spaces can enable pathways to sustainable social practices.