Tucson has been in the international spotlight since December, when it became the first and only city in the United States to be designated a City of Gastronomy by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Tucson got the nod not only for its thriving culinary scene, but also for its rich agricultural history and its potential to incubate sustainable food-related businesses.
Read MoreYou probably heard the news. After a two-year application process, on Dec. 11, 2015, Tucson joined the international Creative Cities Network of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a World City of Gastronomy, the first such designation in the United States.
Read MoreThe designation puts Tucson in a global spotlight — we’re one of just 18 such cities worldwide and the fist in North America — and drives home a point that travelers have been making for decades.
“Tucson is a destination city for people who love great food,” said Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild.
Read MoreEvery day, tens of thousands of cars barrel down Interstate 10, a highway that hugs the western edge of Tucson, Arizona. Many of these drivers may not realize that they are driving past a region with one of the longest food heritages on the continent. Often considered the birthplace of Tucson itself, this swath of Sonoran Desert nestled at the base of the Tucson Mountains is where the O’odham people settled, planting crops of maize, tepary beans and other produce amid a landscape punctuated by prickly pear cacti and sagebrush
Read MoreWe’ve known it—those of us who eat here have tasted it. We’ve felt it in the soil under our fingernails. We’ve seen it in the magenta stain of prickly pear. We’ve heard it in the hammer mill grinding sweet speckled mesquite; smelled it in the exhale of steam from a crowded pot of tamales.
Tucson has always been a city of gastronomy. Today, it was designated a World City of Gastronomy by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), becoming the first city in the United States to receive such a designation.
Read MoreTucson prides itself on being the metropolis in North America with the oldest continuous history of agriculture within its city limits: 4,100 year old corn remains and 3,500 year old irrigation ditches can be found just a few miles from its downtown. While such an extraordinary cultural heritage of cultivating and processing native foods certainly matters to UNESCO, the City of Gastronomy honor came on the basis the city’s capacity for entrepreneurial innovations grounded in social and ecological values unique to this place.
Read MoreWhen Tucson was selected as the first U.S. Creative City of gastronomy by UNESCO last week, its long history of cultivated crops was cited as part of the reason for its designation.
Road builders, sewer plant operators and backhoe operators can share some of the glory, along with the archaeologists who uncovered evidence of early agriculture in the Tucson Basin, said archaeologist James Vint.
Read MoreTucson was recognized last week by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, as one of 47 cities honored for their cultural accomplishments. In the case of the Southern Arizona city, the recognition was for food.
It became the first U.S. city recognized for food by UNESCO. Ensenada, Mexico also was recognized for food along with seven other cities. Recognitions also were handed out to cities for their work in cultural and folk arts, film, design, literature, media arts and music.
Read MoreIt’s official: Tucson is indeed a world capital of gastronomy. UNESCO announced their 2015 additions to the Creative Cities Network, and after the second year applying, Tucson’s application to be recognized as a gastronomic site was approved.
As hashed out in last week’s Tucson Weekly cover story, Tucson’s application for the honor hinged largely on the region’s 4,000 years of continuous agriculture, progressive native seed line preservation programs and the huge impact food-related jobs and businesses have on the local economy. Those reasons, among many others, were enough for the global organization to add Tucson to the network.
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