Cooked Cities explores how urban food systems adapt to increasingly harsh heat by taking into consideration the people who prepare, sell, and deliver food, the infrastructure they rely on, and the everyday practices that offer them relief.
Cooked Cities is a research and multimedia initiative led by The Locavore, with support from the H T Parekh Foundation through its flagship initiative, ReVIVE. Cooked Cities explores how urban heat is reshaping the lives and labour of food workers in Indian cities.
In Mumbai and Delhi-NCR, we will work with people who prepare, sell, and deliver food to understand how they experience heat, what it means for their working conditions and livelihoods, how they are adapting, and what changes they believe would make a difference.
The project has three strands:
- Heat at Work is the main focus. It looks at how workers experience heat during their working day and how it affects their working conditions and livelihoods.
- Heat in the System looks at where and how heat puts markets, delivery networks, and restaurant kitchens under strain, and how access to water, shade, rest, and ventilation shapes working conditions.
- Heat at Home looks beyond the workplace, drawing on selected accounts of how workers and households adapt their cooking, shopping, rest, and other daily routines.
Under Heat at Work, the research focuses on three worker categories:
- Food market vendors who sell fresh produce, fish or meat in urban markets.
- Food delivery workers who deliver prepared meals and groceries, including riders engaged in the food-related component of quick-commerce work.
- Restaurant kitchen workers who prepare and cook food, wash dishes, or support the kitchen in ancillary roles.
Through worker-centred storytelling, visual documentation, qualitative and quantitative research, and focused public engagement, the project will trace how heat moves through urban food systems: through the bodies of workers, the infrastructures that support food access, and the everyday adaptation practices that workers, communities, organisations, citizens, and households rely on.
“I’ve spent years working in restaurant kitchens in Mumbai and other Indian cities, so I have a sense of what it’s like to be in intense heat for hours and just have to get on with the work. With Cooked Cities, I’m keen to hear from the workers themselves, whether they’re in a kitchen, at a market stall, or out making deliveries. I want to know what helps them get through a hot shift, what it costs them to slow down or stop, and the changes they’d like to see in their working conditions.”
— Chef Thomas Zacharias, Founder, The Locavore
Project Objectives
- Combine quantitative and qualitative research with worker-centred storytelling to show how urban heat shapes food labour and the systems workers rely on.
- Document how market vendors, delivery workers, and restaurant kitchen workers in Mumbai and Delhi-NCR experience heat and what they already do to adapt.
- Draw attention to the oft-overlooked work and infrastructure that keep urban food systems running.
- Connect food workers’ lived experiences within urban food systems to relevant researchers, public institutions, and organisations that work with them.
- Share and disseminate the findings of the project through accessible resources and focused public conversations with relevant stakeholders and audiences.
Project Outcomes
- Bring stakeholders, including experts, practitioners, workers, and storytellers together to build a nuanced understanding of the relationship between heat and labour in the urban context.
- Look for patterns driven by primary data collection that illuminate how food workers experience heat in their daily labour, what helps them adapt, and what gets in the way.
- Build a more nuanced and publicly resonant understanding of urban heat by tracing how it affects food labour, food infrastructure, and everyday food practices in Indian cities.
- Establish priorities for further research, communication, programme design, infrastructure responses, or policy attention.
Work with Us
We’re looking for a Project Research Lead to join Cooked Cities on a project-based consultancy in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The Project Research Lead will guide the research from design and piloting through fieldwork and analysis. They’ll train and support field investigators, oversee the quality of the research, and work with The Locavore’s editorial team to communicate the findings clearly and accurately.
About the H T Parekh Foundation and ReVIVE | The H T Parekh Foundation is an independent domestic philanthropy working on environment, healthcare, education, and disability. Through its flagship programme, ReVIVE, it seeks to accelerate adaptation efforts against extreme heat, a silent climate disaster. Through ReVIVE, H T Parekh Foundation works with communities, civil society organisations, and city administrations to pilot, strengthen, and scale heat adaptation solutions in rapidly urbanising towns. ReVIVE takes a long-term, evidence-driven approach, working with multiple partners to generate actionable learnings, pilot innovative solutions, and inform policy.
Cooked Cities is a research and multimedia project by The Locavore supported by H T Parekh Foundation through its flagship programme, ReVIVE. It explores how extreme heat is reshaping the work and everyday lives of food workers in India’s growing cities and what practical changes could make working in the heat less punishing.
