A fire caused Cleveland’s treasured West Side Market to close for 19 days / Photo: Ohio City Inc.

Depending on how much you love public markets (and we know that many of you love public markets a whole lot) you may have already heard that the West Side Market, the bustling heart of Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood for the past century, was shuttered for more than two weeks recently after a fire. Two stalls were destroyed, and the entire market had to be thoroughly cleaned due to smoke damage. Most vendors had to throw out their stock and, barring the few that sell at multiple locations, were out of business for 19 days—a significant hit to any business, never mind small family-owned enterprises.

We’re happy to report that the market re-opened for business this week and, if you live anywhere near Cleveland, there’s a great opportunity to show your support this Saturday, February 23rd, during a special Cash Mob event planned to welcome the vendors back to the neighborhood.

While organizing the 8th International Public Markets Conference in 2012, we worked very closely with the staff of Ohio City Inc. These passionate Placemakers have worked tirelessly over the past few years to build on the West Side Market’s treasured place within the  Cleveland area to revitalize the surrounding district. Those of you who were in attendance at the conference last September know what a spectacular market this is; indeed, it is one of the last great old public market halls in the US. It’s a benchmark, an example that every city should look to as they try to re-make their neighborhoods into healthy places.

We spoke recently with Amanda Dempsey, Ohio City Inc.’s Market District Director, about the planned Cash Mob and the Market Bonds gift certificate program that the org launched in partnership with locally-based financial institution Charter One. “For every $40 in bonds that they buy, people get $10 more to spend at the market,” Amanda explained. “If everyone redeems their bonds, that will add up to $37,000 spent at the market. And we sold out of the bonds just four days after they were issued! Our hope is that, between the cash mob and the bonds, the vendors experience a boost in sales. The best way to get the businesses that were hurt by the fire back on their feet is to get people back shopping in the market, fast.”

The outpouring of support in response to the fire is a crystal clear example of how important great markets are to their communities. If you live within reasonable traveling distance of Cleveland, we encourage you to welcome the West Side Market vendors back during this weekend’s Cash Mob. If you don’t, you can still show your support for this amazing institution on Twitter with the #CMWSM hashtag.

Cleaning the market, brick by brick / Photo: Ohio City Inc.

Click this photo to download the report!

In 2009, the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and in partnership with Columbia University, undertook a study to examine what market characteristics successfully attract low-income shoppers. The study also explored the obstacles that may prevent low income individuals from shopping at a farmers market when one existed nearby, and how youth-oriented market programming affects healthy eating habits among kids and teens. Today, we are thrilled to share with you the results of this study, and to offer recommendations for everyone working to get more healthy food into their communities through farmers markets.

For the study, our team examined eight markets across the United States that served low- to middle-income communities with higher than average ethnic and minority compositions. Each market had unique attributes that identified them for selection. In addition, each market was a previous recipient of a PPS grant, funded by the Kellogg Foundation, which offered technical assistance between the years 2006-2008 in addition to funding.

Out of our analysis of market management data, tracked over several years and surveys of market shoppers and non-market shoppers, we were able to identify two key trends. First, we found that price is not a barrier. Among the survey sample, almost 60% of farmers market shoppers in low-income neighborhoods believed their market had better prices than the grocery store. Among those who did not shop at farmers markets, only 17% cited price as a barrier to shopping at their local farmers market. Second, we learned that information is key. Unlike a grocery store, markets typically lack permanent structures and are therefore more ephemeral by nature. Shoppers need better access to information about schedules and seasonal changes in order to become more regular market shoppers.

One of the most important lessons learned from the focus groups with youth interns at the markets was that the end goal was to produce excellent citizens, not necessarily urban farmers. While eating well, advocating for food justice, and increasing the youths’ knowledge of the local food production process were all taught, it was the emphasis on leadership, personal development, and responsibility that ultimately made the programs successful and left the strongest impact on the youth surveyed.

A summary of the recommendations included in the report:

1.      Location, Location, Location – A common reason cited by non-market shoppers for not patronizing a farmers market was the need to complete their shopping at one location. While it is unlikely that farmers markets will be able to serve that function, positioning markets in locations that give the appearance of one-stop shopping may overcome this access barrier.

Also, given our experience with the transformative power of successful Placemaking, we advocate that market operators who are serious about long term sustainability turn their market into a destination. The market should not only be a place to buy produce, but should incorporate programming that integrates the market into the fabric of the surrounding community.

2.      Know your shoppers – One of the most interesting emerging trends from our data was the varying intensity in market use depending on the income of shoppers. What this tells us is that knowing your most frequent shopper, as well as the shopper demographic who purchases the highest percentage of their produce at the farmers market, is important for markets to achieve financial sustainability and develop a more stable consumer base. Knowing your shoppers has implications for both the kind of marketing and the location of marketing that the market should produce.

3.      Markets targeting a low-income customer base must partner with organizations that share the market’s goals – Partnering with neighborhood organizations helps facilitate better outreach efforts to the intense-use shopper, as previously identified. Furthermore, if the market could operate through an existing organization that shares its mission there is a potential cost sharing component in terms of office space, co-promotion and community recognition.

4.      Farmers Markets need to expand marketing and outreach efforts to reach consumers – We recognize that many market organizers are already well aware of the importance of successful marketing for the success of their farmers market.  However, the data from this study re-affirms the need for constant marketing and outreach to local consumers to educate them about the location, time, and acceptance of SNAP and WIC benefits.

It is our hope that the results of this study will help people to move the dial on creating healthier places through the creation of more effective, engaging farmers markets. Markets are wonderful public gathering spaces that put an emphasis on community health. They make it easier for people to make better dietary choices, while simultaneously bringing neighbors together to form the strong, supportive social networks that are critical to success in leading healthy lifestyles in the long term. And so, without further ado:

Click here to download a PDF of the publication!

Larry Lund

A great public market doesn’t usually just happen–there are a lot of smart, dedicated people behind the scenes who work to make sure that markets are set up to serve their surrounding area. Like any public space, markets work best when they reflect the people who live nearby. They are places for buying and selling food, yes, but they’re also places for meeting and learning about neighbors, accessing services, and becoming part of the daily life of a community.

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Larry Lund, a long-time Placemaker and head of the Chicago-based Real Estate Planning Group (REPG). Larry is an expert on markets, particularly in regard to how they scale up and down to fit the communities in which they are based. If you’d like to meet Larry and learn more about this subject, there is still time to register for the 8th International Public Markets Conference, which will take place in Cleveland, Ohio, just two weeks from now, from September 21-23rd, 2012.

How did your interest in markets begin? How does it relate to what you do now, with real estate planning?

I got involved with markets back in the mid 1980s, when Fred Kent pulled together a group to discuss how we could use Public Markets  to rejuvenate town centers. Our emphasis was on looking at markets as a model for rebuilding activity in the downtown area. Since then, the Public Market movement has evolved from a focus on Placemaking to include a better delivery system for fresh food Now, PPS is talking about how markets can be more than just a center for food—they can deliver other goods and services to communities, as well.

I started the Real Estate Planning Group in 1990, so I had already been working on markets before that, but most of my market projects  have been with PPS. I have now worked on more than 50 Public Markets throughout the country. My primary role working with PPS is to do the economic and market analysis. Even though markets have been around for hundreds of years, the nature has changed and we have had to find new methods to estimate potential using sophisticated tools like gravity models and survey techniques to estimate market shares. It’s very important to try to get the scale right for the market setting and to have some rational basis for estimating sales potential and tenant mix. There is lots of  talk  about sustainability from an environmental standpoint, but we also try to bring the concept of  sustainability from an economic standpoint: is there enough money here so that vendors can be successful and the market can operate in a sustainable fashion. Markets need to meet customer expectations, vendor needs, and operate in a sustainable fashion for whatever entity develops the market.

How important are the characteristics of the surrounding place? Can markets drive development, or are there components that need to be in place already?

There are some characteristics that you absolutely need for a market to work well, like visibility and accessibility. Historically, markets were always in or near the center of trade routes, and there’s an intrinsic need for that even today. If there’s a strong sense of place already, before a market locates somewhere, that obviously helps. However, in some cases, putting in a market can help develop a place if the market is large enough and visible enough. We’ve seen, in the US, how a market hall strengthens the center of towns and can complement other uses such as retail, office, and residential.

A bustling street market in Markets Conference host city Cleveland / Photo: PPS

What’s always a challenge is trying to get the scale right, and that’s something I’m going to be talking a lot about at the Markets Conference in Cleveland later this month. There’s an equation here in terms of sustainability, making sure there are enough people and enough vendors to support your market. Markets have a great appeal in just a visceral sense, but not all of them turn out to be successful. You still need a good location for them, and you need enough people who have access to the area. The larger the market, generally speaking, the larger the draw. There has to be a relationship with the population around the market; it’s important to understand who your customers are: their interest in fresh foods, their sensitivity to prices, and what the competition looks like.

What a lot of people don’t recognize is that there’s also a big difference between farmers’ markets and year-round public markets. The economics around both of them are radically different. It’s important to understand that, if you have a successful farmers’ market, changing that to what I call a public market building is a big leap for everyone, and a lot of analysis has to be done before making that decision because the nature of the market changes.

One of the attractions of farmers’ markets, besides outstanding food products, is the ephemeral nature of it. These markets are one or two days a week, and they’re seasonal; the ‘event quality’ is a very strong attraction for people. That changes when you start institutionalizing it into a market building, where the economics require you to start running the market six or seven days a week. For farmers to turn themselves into permanent vendors changes their business model, too. I often say that my role is to make sure that the visioning process doesn’t turn into a hallucination, and that there’s economic support in changing the business structure.

Can you explain more about scaling markets to their context? How are markets different in big cities versus more rural communities? How are they similar?

Most of my work is related to repositioning existing enclosed markets and responding to  the desire of successful farmers’ market wanting to become a  year-round event. In either case it is usually  more challenging in rural areas than it is in urbanized areas, and I have to say it’s even a challenge in urbanized areas in being able to find vendors today who can handle that year-round schedule. It’s difficult to find butchers and fishmongers, for instance. It’s even especially difficult to find  produce vendors—the main driver in most markets—who can operate full-time. When you want to run something on an annualized basis the seasonality draw begins to disappear.

That’s not to say  markets cannot run year-round and sell in the winter time, but it’s difficult if you don’t have a wide variety of food. Today there’s a whole issue of commitment to the local food movement and what that means for the customer. That’s something that has to be considered if you’re aiming to create a local-food market versus allowing food to be imported to your area and offering a full scope of services. I always caution that market managers have to understand their goal in building a public market building. I think a lot of people don’t give that enough consideration. Different kinds of markets meet different objectives.

What I’m seeing now is a series of market buildings people are developing that only have maybe three or four tenants. They’re not farmers, but you’ll find a bakery and a charcuterie and a coffee place, and they develop into third places. People are looking at these places as community-builders. You can see this happening in Seattle, for example, outside of the Pike Place Market. There are a series of buildings that have sprung up around the market that are more about creating an enjoyable place for public gathering than delivery of fresh local food—they’re great third places built around the food movement.

These storefront buildings have developed into a food cluster that offers something for each part of the day. In the morning, that the bakery serves coffee; the charcuterie starts serving sandwiches at lunch; in the evening, you may have a wine bar that’s part of this cluster. There are things to activate the space throughout the day, which makes it a nice neighborhood attraction for people to come to.

A mix of uses ensures that the area around the Pike Place market is always bustling / Photo: PPS

For our last question, how do you expect the upcoming markets conference in Cleveland to shed light on these issues?

In one of the sessions, we’re going to be talking about the scalability of markets extensively and getting people to focus on what the sponsor’s objectives are. We’ll show examples of different kinds of markets & what people have been doing around the country to meet various needs and community goals. We’ll help people identify and think through that process to make sure they have a project that’s successful.

Markets have to adjust themselves as they see who their customers are, and this is part of the discussion we’ll be having: how markets evolve even after they open. An exciting thing about markets is that they allow for change, and they adjust to their customers. The whole thing is about getting the scale and mission right. It’s always easier if you can do that up front, but frankly all retail has to go through that transition and evolution of understanding their customers and vice versa. The needs and demands of consumers are always changing. Our goal is to help people meet their objectives and be economically sustainable in delivering all the good things that  markets can deliver to their communities.

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Celebrating 25 years since its first gathering, the 8th International Public Markets Conference will set a new direction for the vital role markets play in transforming local economies and communities. Click here to register today!

The Pearl Brewrey's Farmers' Market has helped to make the site a food destination / Photo: John W. Schulze via Flickr

Food – we need it, we love it, and we structure our lives and cultures around it. San Antonio, Texas, is a city that is starting to structure its neighborhoods around it, starting with an ambitious redevelopment project called the Pearl Brewery. Located on 22 acres along the banks of the San Antonio River north of downtown, today’s Pearl is a multi-use campus of buildings originally founded as the J. B. Behloradsky Brewery and City Brewery over 120 years ago. The current vision for the site is for a vibrant urban district to grow out from a culinary destination that brings people together around the celebration of local food and culture.

Since PPS first got involved with the master planning process for Pearl in 2005, we’ve watched this place change the way that San Antonians think of food and its role in their city. Senior Vice President Phil Myrick, who is working now on the next phase of expansion, describes Pearl as “the vision and bold scheme of a local entrepreneur of hot sauce and salsa.” This entrepreneur and visionary developer is Kit Goldsbury, who purchased the fallow Pearl campus in 2001 through his investment firm Silver Ventures. Developments currently underway at Pearl include a plaza and hotel and the addition of retail, restaurants, and residential units that now number over 200.

The main brewery building's landmark tower watches over the site / Photo: RedTail_Panther via Flickr

A key development milestone was Kit’s courtship of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) which led to the establishment of  a third campus at Pearl in 2010 (their other two residences are in Hyde Park, New York and Napa Valley, California). Says PPS’s Meg Walker: “CIA was an early anchor for Pearl, which was housed in a smaller building before moving to its current and larger home. The Farmers Market at the site also got going early on, along with food festivals in the parking lot.” The weekly market in particular was a Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper way of weaving local, fresh, and seasonal foods into daily life of the site’s neighbors. Together, the CIA and Farmers Market have been key in re-framing Pearl as a major destination at the intersection of community life and healthy, local food.

Future plans for Pearl reflect a well-curated mix of creative uses in support of food endeavors of all types. The presence of the CIA will act as a major stimulus for other food and cooking events on the campus, tapping into the power of triangulation to enhance the vibrancy of the place. Ideas for the public plaza, for instance, include edible gardens and a chef’s table, while the Black Box aspires to be a pop-up space for young entrepreneurial restaurateurs.

Latin American food  is a common thread throughout these ventures, as are creativity and comfort. “This stems from an articulated vision and desire to give back to the San Antonio community in a nurturing way through food,” Meg explains. Part of the nurture is designing a space that provides comfort to its users in the most practical of ways. Elizabeth Fauerso, chief marketing officer at Pearl, says, “The need for shade and water provisions to make the campus feel welcoming and usable in a hot climate was one of the key considerations in designing the landscape.”

Plenty of shade makes Pearl enjoyable even in San Antonio's hot summer months / Photo: The Brit_2 via Flickr

Pearl also hosts a variety of activities and programs, including cultural events (films, parties, conferences, and live performances) and engaging services and retail like the independent Twig Book Shop and Bike World bike rentals. Well-connected by an expanded Riverwalk and a bike share station , Pearl uses the Power of 10 to create a magnetic destination for the surrounding community. “Pearl is helping set an exciting drumbeat for San Antonio,” says Phil. “In several of the local workshops that PPS has conducted recently in the city, when asked to map San Antonio’s best places, participants have mentioned Pearl despite it being brand new to the scene. There is a feeling of serendipity that people associate with it.”

The momentum behind Pearl’s transformation is remarkable, but at the same time planning remains responsive and flexible. Meg emphasizes, “Pearl is not springing full-grown out of the developer’s head. While some developers want everything at once, build-out at Pearl has been evolving incrementally over the past six years, gradually bringing restaurants in and creating places people want to visit as a destination. And it’s working. People love it.”

In the larger context of the city, Pearl is the leading edge of River North’s rebirth as a vibrant arts district that promotes an urban lifestyle and creative living opportunities. In fact, the combination of dense urban housing and the infrastructure to embolden its growth is a key tenet of the plan for a vibrant central city. In February 2012, HR&A published a report, Center City Strategic Framework Plan, Implementation, commissioned by Centro Partnership of San Antonio and the City that illustrates how Pearl helps fulfill the city’s goal to encourage more people to live downtown. “Residential growth is the key to unlocking the benefits sought by the city,” the report explains, “including downtown amenities, redevelopment of existing building stock, and the presence of more vibrant neighborhood life on the street and in the public realm.” Anchored by the amenities and vibrancy of Pearl’s food and cultural attractions, the River North district  is enjoying a population boom that would have been unimaginable just five years ago when it was mostly vacant industrial land by the highway.

Going back to Kit’s original vision, Elizabeth says, “Pearl is his love letter to San Antonio.” In helping create the heart and soul of the neighborhood, Pearl’s potential as a public multi-use destination is kickstarting the economic development of a more livable, nourishing downtown.

This September’s International Public Markets Conference will be a key opportunity to gather with public market managers, boosters, and organizers to talk about how to create even more vital public spaces centered on food and community. The early bird registration period ends on July 31st–
click here to register today!

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Image Sources: Kansas City, Minneapolis, Detroit, Cincinnati, Santiago, San Juan, Halifax, Bury, London/Covent, London/Columbia, Copenhagen, Benjarmasin, Adelaide, The Channon

The breathtaking central hall of Cleveland's West Side Market, a major hub in the host city for this year's International Public Markets Conference (Sept. 21-23) / Photo: PBS NewsHour via Flickr

Picture yourself at the supermarket, awash in fluorescent light. You’re trying to stock up for the next couple of weeks, since it’s a busy time of year. You grab some granola bars (and maybe even a box of pop tarts), some frozen dinners, a box of macaroni with one of those little packets of powdered cheese stuff. And oh, they’re running one of those promotions where you can get ten cans of soup for, like, a dollar each. Perfect! Dinner for the next two weeks. On the way to the register, you swing by the produce aisle to grab a bunch of bananas. Like many people these days, you’re trying to eat healthy, and breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

Now imagine that your neighborhood had a public market–the kind of place that’s easy to pop by on the way home from work to grab fresh food every couple of days. Before you reach the open-air shed, you’re surrounded by produce of every shape and color; you can smell oranges and basil from half a block away. As you follow your appetite through the maze of bins and barrels, you bump into your neighbors, and make plans to head downtown to the central market over the weekend to take a cooking class and pick up some less common ingredients. You may even make a day of it and check out the new weekly craft fair that takes place the next block over.

A boy and his mother examine produce at a farmers market in East New York / Photo: PPS

The contrast is stark. In most places today, at least in many Western countries, shopping is a chore; our food system has stopped being about food, and has become entirely about convenience. Food spoils, meaning that we used to have to shop at markets every few days; freezers and preservatives have freed us from those constraints, but in the process food has become disconnected from the natural cycle of daily life–and, thus, the communities of people that we shared our markets with. “There’s a lot of talk about food deserts today, but what many neighborhoods really have are place deserts,” says PPS’s Steve Davies. “As a result, we’re seeing a movement back to this idea of the Market City, with markets acting as catalysts for creating centers in neighborhoods that have lost their sense of place.”

Market Cities (and Market Towns) are places with strong networks for the distribution of healthy, locally-produced food. They have large central markets that act as hubs for the region and function as great multi-use destinations, with many activities clustering nearby; moving out into the neighborhoods, these cities contain many smaller (but still substantial) neighborhood markets that sell all the necessities for daily cooking needs; in between, you’ll find small corner grocers, weekly farmers markets, produce carts, and other small-scale distribution points. Market Cities are, in essence, places where food is one of the fundamental building blocks of urban life–not just fuel that you use to get through the day.

Today, Barcelona is often held up as one of the truest examples of a Market City system in action. “They have an incredibly thriving network of around 45 permanent public markets,” notes PPS’s Kelly Verel, “because when they planned out the city in the late 19th century, they considered markets the same way that you consider all utilities–like, where does the water go, the power, the garbage, etc.”

A map showing the locations of public markets around Barcelona, and the areas they serve.

Barcelona’s markets, many of which now incorporate modern grocery stores, prove that contemporary urban food systems do not necessarily need to use the big box supermarket as their base unit, and that markets are more than just nice extras or luxuries. In fact, with people growing increasingly suspicious of modern agricultural practices, the idea that the paradigm could flip is looking less and less far-fetched. “Markets are viable,” argues PPS’s David O’Neil. “They’ve always been viable, but their viability is especially apt today because the global economy has skewered our sense of being able to support ourselves. Markets are very reassuring places, because they give you a sense of responsibility for your own health. People are experimenting, and reinventing what it means to have a good life.”

According to O’Neil, there is Market City ‘DNA’ still hidden around most cities. Our cities grew up around markets and, while many of the old buildings have been dismantled, inexpensive and lightweight farmers markets have been making a comeback. By 1946, there were just 499 markets left in the US; that number rose to 2,863 by 2000, and then shot up to 7,175 by 2011. Many of the great public markets we know today started out as nothing more than roadside exchanges, so there is reason to believe that some of these new markets could very well put down more permanent roots if they become reintegrated into the life of their surrounding neighborhoods.

Up in Nova Scotia, where Davies and O’Neil have been working with the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market, Operations Manager Ewen Wallace notes the importance of his market (which does have its own permanent building) in the local community. “Throughout my involvement in this project and spending so much time face-to-face with the community at large” he says, “the thing that’s really hit home is that the people of Halifax really do consider this their market.”

Shoppers peruse the booths at the Halifax Seaport Farmers Market / Photo: Nicole Bratt via Flickr

And while the market is truly a stalwart (they’ve never missed a Saturday in 262 years!), the role that it plays in the regional economy contributes greatly to the sense of community ownership, since most residents of Atlantic Canada are just a generation away from a farmer or fisherman. “At the end of World War II,” Wallace explains, “we had around 35,000 independent farms in Nova Scotia. Now we have around 3,800. This market is intended to serve as a hub from which money in the urban core is being channeled back into rural areas around the province. This is all tied to food security.”

In Portland, Oregon, Director Trudy Toliver’s Portland Farmers Market benefits greatly from  a strong local food culture. “In Portland, for the most part, we really care a lot about food,” Toliver says. “It’s just important to us; the population has strong values about eating healthy food. We also don’t have many commodity farmers in Oregon–we grow food here. In a way, we’ve hit on the perfect storm.”

When food and agriculture play an important role in local culture, a market becomes an easier sell. But with many cities disconnected from the greater food systems that serve them, ancillary uses become important for longevity. This bodes well for places; as Davies explains: “Great markets are created through the clustering of activity. They require the intentional aggregation of local food production, but also of other services and functions. The food is the central reason for why people gather, and that gathering creates a hub for community life.”

Since markets are centered on the sale of nutrient-rich, natural foods, one smart way to add value to these locations is to focus on creating “healthy food hubs,” which cluster health-related activities around markets to encourage visitors not just to eat more fruits and vegetables, but to take a more proactive approach to their own well-being. Some markets include things like health clinics, fitness classes, nutrition information, or classes that teach healthy living principles. Healthy food hubs are especially useful in low-income areas where the need is more acute because of the high cost of regular preventative medical care.

Markets can also serve to amplify cherished aspects of local culture. Says Verel, “The idea of a marketplace is pretty open to what the talents and interests are in a given region. Food will always be the core, but how you build off of that depends on local needs. What if one of Detroit’s markets was for classic cars? Every Saturday you could set up the food stands in a parking lot, and line classic cars for sale up along the edges. If you’re open to it, a market can be anything.”

Relaxing with a view of the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene / Photo: Eli Duke via Flickr

For a success story of a market not only building off of, but strengthening local identity, Verel taps the Brooklyn Flea, which has served as a major driver behind Brooklyn’s well-documented boom in artisanal food and craft goods. “The Flea gave all of these people who had ideas for a product a market, when they couldn’t have gotten it into a store because they were too small. There are so many permanent businesses here that started out of the Flea, and together they give Brooklyn this interesting character.”

This hits on one of the major strengths of the Market City in today’s economy, especially in down-at-heel cities where the things that they used to be famous for making are no longer made. Along with industry, many cities have lost their sense of identity. Markets offer a Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper way to start rebuilding some of that identity and economic activity (as some of our recent work in Detroit has shown). Food is something that every city and town has the resources to produce locally–if a place as densely-built as New York can become an urban agriculture leader, any city can.

In Halifax, Wallace can rattle off a long list of activities that the Seaport Farmers Market has added to its programming, from a library book-drop to serve far-flung farmers, to student art exhibits, to community org booths. These efforts are all aimed at turning the market into a “modern agora,” in his words. Most exciting are the partnerships with businesses in the surrounding area that highlight the market’s vendors, hinting at the potential for markets to serve as economic anchors.

“In the community,” he explains, ” our landlord has put together a committee to get neighbors involved to promote the area as a district. In August of 2011, the market partnered with the Westin Hotel across the street, and they built the concept for their restaurant around the idea of a 100-mile diet–now they’ve got it down to a 50-mile diet. They are sourcing as many ingredients from the market as possible. They’re listing all of the producers from around Nova Scotia on their menus.”

Seattle's Pike Place Market is the hub of a model market district / Photo: PPS

In a Market City, the most vibrant places are these types of market districts: places where market activity spills out into the surrounding streets and businesses. Using the Power of 10 framework, we can identify market districts as neighborhoods with at least ten market-related activities all within close proximity to each other. Zooming out, a great Market City or Market Town needs at least ten market districts, where local activity spreads out from the neighborhood marketplace.

If you want to see a Market City in action, you may want to consider attending the 8th International Public Markets Conference in Cleveland this September. Chosen as the host city because of the role that food is playing in its remarkable turnaround, Cleveland illustrates many of the aspects of a Market City, according to O’Neil.

The West Side Market tower, seen from the nearby Ohio City Farm / Photo: PPS

“From agricultural production areas, to smaller markets, to bigger markets, you can really see things changing in Cleveland,” he says. “For a long time, Cleveland was a Market Town, and now institutions like the West Side Market are leading its post-industrial revival. The WSM isn’t a suburban market, but it’s not right downtown–it was always a neighborhood market. It’s a good lab for seeing the power that a market can have on its town or district. The Ohio City district has become an attractive place to open up a business because of the market. The effect is becoming so positive that it’s affecting the larger city of Cleveland, itself. The market is becoming a sun, and the city is leaning toward it for oxygen, light, and life.”

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Don’t forget — early bird registration for the 8th International Markets Conference ends on July 31st. Act now to lock in the lowest rates!

Families peruse stands offering a variety of fresh foods at a farmers market in downtown Milwaukee / Photo: Ethan Kent

According to Dr. Richard Jackson, a pioneering public health advocate and former CDC official now serving as the Chair of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA, the idea that buildings, streets, and public spaces play a key role in the serious public health issues that we face in the US “has undergone a profound sea change in the past few years. It’s gone from sort of a marginal, nutty thing to becoming something that’s common sense for a lot of people.”

That’s good news, but as a profile of Dr. Jackson in the Chronicle of Higher Education notes, today’s click-driven media climate means that the message of public health advocates like Jackson is “often pithily condensed to a variation of this eye-catching headline: ‘Suburbia Makes You Fat.’” And while these pithily-titled articles may do some good in alerting more people to the problems inherent in the way that we’ve been designing our cities and towns for the past half-century, they oversimplify the message and strip out one of the most important factors in any effort to change the way that we shape the places where we live and work: social capital.

Highways, parking lots, cars, big box stores–these are merely symptoms of a larger problem: many people have become so used to their surroundings looking more like a suburban arterial road than a compact, multi-use destination that they’ve become completely disconnected from Place. Real life is lived amongst gas stations and golden arches; we have to visit Disneyland to see a thriving, compact Main Street. To question a condition that’s so pervasive, as individuals, seems futile.

Bikers and walkers chat at a market in Portland, OR / Photo: npGREENWAY via Flickr

That’s why, if we want to see people challenging the way that their places are made on a larger scale, we need to focus first on developing the loose social networks that are so vital to urban resilience. This is the stuff Jane Jacobs was talking about when she wrote, in the Death and Life of Great American Cities, that “lowly, unpurposeful, and random as they appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life must grow.” When people are connected enough to feel comfortable talking about what they want for their neighborhood with their neighbors, it’s much easier to muster political will to stop, say, a highway from cutting through Greenwich Village–or, in contemporary terms, to tear down a highway that was actually built.

In Dr. Jackson’s words: “The key thing is to get the social engagement. Community-building has to happen first; people need to articulate what’s broke, and then what they want.” Serendipitously, gathering to discuss a vision for a healthier future is an ideal way to build the social capital needed to turn the understanding that our built environment is hurting us into action to change the existing paradigm. At PPS, we have seen first-hand how the Placemaking process has brought people together in hundreds of cities around the world with the goal of improving shared public spaces; it’s a process that strengthens existing ties, creates new ones, and invigorates communities with the knowledge of how they can make things happen.

The Healthy Places Program (HPP), which began last year as a collaboration between staff members working in PPS’s Public Markets and Transportation programs. “There are many different elements that make up a healthy community,” says Aurash Khawarzad, an Associate in PPS’s Transportation division, and a key player in getting HPP off the ground. “There are social factors, environmental factors, etc–and what we at PPS can do is take these people in our offices who are focusing on their own areas and bring them together.”

Aurash Khawarzad leads a Healthy Places workshop in upstate New York / Photo: PPS

With that collaborative mission in mind, Khawarzad and Kelly Verel, a Senior Associate in PPS’s Public Markets division, set out on a trip across New York last fall to facilitate a series of day-long Healthy Places workshops with local, regional, and state public health officials and a host of community partners. In partnership with the New York Academy of Medicine’s DASH-NY, the PPS team visited a range of communities, from rural towns, to suburban stretches, to major and mid-sized cities. The workshops were designed to help participants understand how multi-modal transportation systems can be better designed to create a network that links a series of destinations, including healthy food hubs and markets, to create a built environment that promotes well-being by making healthy lifestyle choices (like walking, biking, and eating fresh food) more convenient and fun. They focused not just on what wasn’t working, but on brainstorming ways that participants’ communities could become truly healthy places.

Any expert worth their salt will tell you that maintaining good health is not just about exercise or diet, but both together. In much the same way, addressing the problem of bad community design and its impacts on Public Health requires that we not just promote better transportation or better food access alone, but that we focus on both simultaneously. “The reaction we got from the the Healthy Places training attendees was really good,” notes Verel. “I think people have been really siloed in their efforts. We would ask people what they were doing and they would say ‘access to food in schools,’ or ‘rails to trails,’ and that they focus exclusively on that area.”

Understanding public health within the context of Place is essential, because the problems created and reinforced by our built environment are so broad in scope. HPP takes that case directly to local decision-makers and creates a learning environment where they can build their understanding of how Place effects health together, in a cross-disciplinary setting. This “silo-busting” is absolutely critical; as Dr. Jackson writes in the introduction to his latest book, Designing Healthy Communities (a companion to the four-part PBS special of the same name):

“For too long we have had doctors talking only to doctors, and urban planners, architects, and builders talking only to themselves. The point is that all of us, including those in public health, have got to get out of the silos we have created, and we have got to connect—actually talk to each other before and while we do our work—because there is no other way we can create the environment we want. Public health in particular must be interdisciplinary, for no professional category owns public health or is legitimately excused from it.”

The emphasis, there, is added, as this phrase strike at the heart of the problem we face. To shift the default development model from “low-density, use-segregated, and auto-centric” to one that promotes healthy, active lifestyles and more vibrant communities will take strong leadership from people who aren’t afraid to work across departments, and “turn everything upside-down to get it right side up.” PPS is certainly not the only organization to recognize this, and we’re thrilled to be part of a growing movement. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has its own Healthy Community Design Initiative program. Internationally, Urban Age made designing for public health the subject of a major conference in Hong Kong held late last year (from which a full report is now available).

New bike lanes are just one part of Pro Walk / Pro Bike: "Pro Place" host city Long Beach, CA's strategy to become "Biketown USA" / Photo: waltarrrrr via Flickr

Of course, individual citizens have hardly been waiting around and twiddling their thumbs. Active transportation, healthy food, and community gardening advocates have been working for decades on the ground, pushing for incremental changes to the way our cities and towns operate. Just through the robust conversations taking place online around issues like #completestreets, #biking, and #urbanag, it’s easy to see how well-organized and resonant these movements have become. Mounting public awareness is pushing more public officials toward programs like HPP, to learn about how focusing on Place can facilitate inter-agency collaboration around the common cause of improving public health.

Whether you’re looking at this issue from the top-down or the bottom-up, there will be several opportunities to gather with active transportation and public markets professionals, advocates, and enthusiasts from around the world this fall for debate, discussion, and more of that vital social capital development. As part of the Healthy Places Program, PPS is hosting two conferences, just one week apart: the 17th Pro Walk / Pro Bike: “Pro Place” conference in Long Beach, CA (Sept. 10-13); and the 8th International Public Markets Conference in Cleveland, OH (Sept. 21-23).

Cleveland, which will host the 8th International Public Markets Conference in September, is home to the historic, bustling West Side Market / Photo: Catherine V via Flickr

If you’re approaching Healthy Places from the transportation world, Pro Walk / Pro Bike (#prowalkprobike) will explore how efforts to advocate for safer and better infrastructure for active transportation modes are being greatly enhanced as more and more people learn about the benefits of getting around on their own two feet (with or without pedals). If you’re more of a “foodie,” the Public Markets conference (#marketsconf8) will highlight the burgeoning local food scene in Cleveland and throughout Northeastern Ohio, and will spotlight the iconic West Side Market, arguably the most architecturally significant market building in the US. Both events will focus on how supporters of active transportation and public markets, respectively, can grow their movements by busting down silos and thinking h0listically about how their chosen cause can be part of the effort to create Healthy Places.

If you can’t make it to Long Beach or Cleveland, there are plenty of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper steps that you can take to get your neighbors together and talking, out in public space, building local connections. “Something like a playstreet or a summer street shows people that, not only do they like this kind of varied activity and flexibility and want more of it in their community’s streets, but that they can actually make it happen,” Verel explains. “It takes more basic manpower–putting up tents, handing out flyers–than actual lobbying or money to get the DOT to shut down a street for one day and focus on social interaction and healthy activity.”

And you can start even smaller than that. PPS mentor Holly Whyte once wrote that “We are not hapless beings caught in the grip of forces we can do little about, and wholesale damnations of our society only lend a further mystique to organization. Organization has been made by man; it can be changed by man.” If our problem is that we have become siloed and isolated, at work and in our neighborhoods, then the most immediate way for us to start re-organizing is to reach out to the people around us, with something as simple as a friendly “hello” on the street. An interaction like this might seem ‘lowly, unpurposeful, and random’–but at the very least, it will make you feel happier and more connected to your community. And guess what? That’s good for you, too.

So, here’s to your health!

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Click here to register for Pro Walk / Pro Bike: “Pro Place”
(Early Summer rate available until June 29)

Click here to register for the 8th International Public Markets Conference
(Early bird rate available until July 31)
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A Playstreet-style fundraiser for cicLAvia in Los Angeles / Photo: waltarrrrr via Flickr

The Peaches & Greens market played host to a Placemaking-themed Harvest Festival last fall / Photo: PPS

Detroit has become a media darling in recent years, as the story of its rapid de-industrialization and population loss has given way to a new narrative: one of entrepreneurial arts groups, neighborhood farmers markets, and corporate investment downtown by the likes of Quicken Loans and Compuware, catalyzed in part by the new public square at Campus Martius. America loves a good underdog story, and after seeing Motown emptied out, and staring at so many decadently macabre “ruin porn” photos of the city’s deteriorating train station and empty Deco office towers, Detroit is an underdog par excellence.

The green shoots of renewal have generated so much interest that we’ve heard that  many Detroiters are beginning to develop a sort of “planning fatigue” as a rush of independent efforts launched to help turn their city around have left some wondering when the analyses, studies, and public input forums will produce some real results. “This is where PPS’s Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper approach comes in,” according to PPS’s Elena Madison. “There are a lot of great initiatives going in the city, but it is hard to connect them to a larger vision. The fact that farmers markets are often temporary and flexible means that they can spark immediate improvements and build local confidence today, while also informing strategies for long-term change at both the site and neighborhood levels.”

Last year, with the support of the Kresge Foundation, Madison and a team of PPS Placemakers (including Senior VP Steve Davies and Senior Director of Markets David O’Neill, both of whom previously worked on developing the plan to revamp the city’s iconic Eastern Market) traveled to Detroit to work on food markets in two very different neighborhoods. One market, sited in a church parking lot in the Grandmont-Rosedale neighborhood on the city’s northwest side, was located in a relatively stable, middle-class area. The second site was around Peaches & Greens, a non-profit produce market in Central Detroit, an area with high rates of vacancy, unemployment, and a population in greater need.

As Davies explains, “Markets often arise to address existing food deserts—in Detroit, a lot of the markets are citizen-driven: they sprang up because people were responding to a local need. But another major issue that we’re addressing is that many Detroit neighborhoods are also Place deserts. These are communities where there’s just nowhere to go; you have all of these people living near each other, you have schools, churches, and social services, but there’s little public civic life to speak of.”

In Grandmont-Rosedale, market vendors and the neighborhood association (which owns North Rosedale community park) came to realize how Triangulation could lead to a more symbiotic relationship: the park can galvanize support for its new capital campaign by incorporating site preparations for the market into its plans, while the market vendors will benefit greatly from relocating to a multi-use site with a strong sense of Place. Over in Central Detroit, meanwhile, people were more than ready for a change. “They basically said to us, ‘Anything we can do to create a stronger sense of place, we are willing to try,’” Madison recalls. The PPS team wound up organizing a Harvest Festival with local partner Central Detroit Christian CDC, which runs Peaches & Greens, in order to test out different uses and develop a strategy for how the market’s building, a once-abandoned storefront, can become the heart of a “mini Main Street” with a variety of services, parks and gardens on vacant land, and even traffic calming measures.

Markets often arise when residents living in a food desert take action to get more healthy food into their neighborhoods / Photo: PPS

Today, both markets are working to implement their Placemaking visions. Peaches & Greens will soon begin cleaning up vacant sites and next year construction will start on a small addition to accommodate more programming and a commercial-grade community kitchen, where it will offer community dinners, cooking classes, and job skills training. At North Rosedale Park, plans call for moving the farmers market to its new home as early as  mid-summer. Madison attributes progress being made at both sites to the fact that Placemaking is a process that produces projects that communities can really act on: “We’re not talking with people abstractly about how to ‘improve their food system.’ We’re working with them to implement very specific, concrete improvements.”

Recently, PPS began working with another group of markets in Detroit, this time in partnership with the Kellogg Foundation. The three sites involved are all part of the nascent network known as the Detroit Community Markets, with smaller markets learning from each-other and receiving support from Detroit’s spectacularly successful Eastern Market.  Two of the markets are currently located on hot and unattractive parking lots, but this summer will open with new “Place Makeovers” featuring new tents, seating areas, and greenery that were planned during recent Placemaking workshops with local residents.  One of Kellogg’s goals is for this new initiative to plan strategically for including markets into Detroit’s long-term planning efforts–meaning that markets could play an integral role in the city’s turnaround not only as places for commerce and healthy food for families and children, but as anchors and destinations for their surrounding neighborhoods.

In a city like Detroit, where needs far outstrip resources, public markets offer a lot of bang for the buck. Markets need people, and plenty of them–vendors, customers, volunteers–meaning that they offer plenty of easy ways for people to interact and take part in changing the way that their public space is used. “The people we worked with in Central Detroit kept saying, ‘We want more places to get together, to just be together,’” says Madison, echoing Davies’ observation about the importance of addressing Place deserts. “They’ve been really responsive and productive; what’s happening at that site is a great example of how people can help themselves.”

Through our work on markets across Detroit, we’ve also witnessed all the ways that Detroiters are working rebuild their public spaces from the bottom up–creating farms and gardens, walking and biking paths, and restoring community parks.  And since the only cure for planning fatigue is action, that’s the best news we’ve heard about the city yet.

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Big thanks to all of our partners in Detroit, who are making amazing things happen on the ground every day: The Kresge Foundation, CDCCDC, Grandmont-Rosedale Development Corp, North Rosedale Park Civic Association, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Eastern Market Corp, Warren/Conner Development Coalition, CHASS, Joy-Southfield Development Corp, and. last but not least, the Detroit Community Markets.

Neighborhood residents had no shortage of suggestions for ways to make this a better place.

PPS knew that engaging the neighborhood in Placemaking would take more than just a workshop. So, with the support of the Kresge Foundation and working with the Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation (CDC), we decided to do a fun harvest festival that would demonstrate the neighborhood’s potential. It would also be a way to get more Placemaking ideas from people who would be unlikely to show up a community meeting.

And it worked. On October 29, PPS was thrilled to be part of a very successful harvest festival outside the wonderful neighborhood produce market Peaches & Greens, which is celebrating its third anniversary. Although flanked by vacant lots, Peaches & Greens proved to be the right spot for the festival — and the event showed how this could evolve into an even better place for the neighborhood to come together.

(Check out this great CBS News report about Peaches & Greens’ truck delivery service, which brings produce to the doorsteps of Detroiters who otherwise would have no access to fresh food.)

The rain held off and it turned out to be a great day, filled with games, horse-drawn hay rides, marshmallow roasting, and lots of Placemaking suggestions offered in PPS’s “Placemaking in Detroit” tent.

This is a neighborhood with a lot of basic needs. Many residents are out of work. Many don’t own cars, and the public transit system is utterly inadequate. Safety and security are a major concern — the city can’t even keep up with repairing broken streetlights. A lot of houses are abandoned and occupied by squatters.

The term “food desert” has become well known, but this part of Detroit might also be called a “place desert.” As the city’s population has shrunk, neighborhoods like Central Detroit have lost not just people and homes, but places to come together. Still, a lot of assets remain, including some beautiful housing stock and strong community organizations such as CDC. Importantly, the city has designated this as one of the communities where resources are going to be focused in the future.

The tough conditions faced by local people made the response to the festival even more heartening. People were ready to jump right in and become part of something more meaningful. They provided a lot of practical ideas for activities could be taking place around Peaches & Greens on a more regular basis. One thing we heard from a lot of local residents was that they are eager to see more community-building events in the neighborhood. Lots of people stuck around after the festival was over to help clean up.

One of the day’s high points came when we announced the winner of a bicycle we were able to raffle off. The woman who won it told us that she wasn’t going to keep it herself — she was going to give it to her grandson, who just turned 18, so that he could look for a job.

This is just a pilot for what we hope will be many more events in the neighborhood, along with some “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” improvements that will make people’s lives better in the short term.

Big thanks to our partners at CDC and Kresge for making it possible.

Cleveland’s historic West Side Market is an incubator for over 100 locally-owned food businesses

The 8th International Public Markets Conference is coming to Cleveland next fall! Mark your calendars for September 21-23, 2012.

Celebrating 25 years since the 1^st International Public Markets Conference, the 8^th International Public Markets Conference will set a new direction for the vital role markets play in transforming local economies and communities. Outstanding speakers from around the country and the world will be on hand to deliver lectures, workshops, and breakout sessions, to share wisdom gained from their years dedicated to the movement, and to encourage participants to creatively respond to the emerging challenges of today and tomorrow.

PPS is organizing the conference and co-hosting it with Ohio City Incorporated and the City of Cleveland.

The conference will highlight Cleveland’s burgeoning local food scene and its commitment to sustainability. It will also recognize one of Cleveland’s greatest treasures – the West Side Market, which celebrates its centennial in 2012. The West Side Market has played a key role in advancing new and creative businesses in the Ohio City neighborhood, a part of the city that is now known as “Cleveland’s artisan neighborhood.” The market’s history and resilience make Cleveland a perfect place to celebrate the economic and social power of public markets.

Learn more about the conference and sign up to be notified when registration opens here.

Available Dates and Locations:

October 20, 2011 Syracuse, NY
October 21, 2011 Batavia, NY
October 26, 2011 Saranac Lake, NY
November 7, 2011 Farmingdale, NY
November 9, 2011 Albany, NY
November 15, 2011 Brooklyn, NY

How can you create healthy places in your community? Photo: Wally Gobetz via Flickr.

The Healthy Places Training Program presents a holistic approach to improving population by planning active transportation systems that connect to key destinations, including healthy food hubs that eliminate food deserts and support local business. The training program will work with local, regional, and state public health officials, along with other key stakeholders, to understand and implement policies and programs that encourage physical activity and healthy eating — while also revitalizing the streets, parks, and gathering spaces within their communities.

The trainings will be one day each, and will include presentations and interactive exercises, including a facilitated on-site analysis activity. Each training will educate practitioners and stakeholders on best practices in fostering active transportation and healthy food programs through markets — using policy, design, and community engagement actions. Training instructors will review methods and tools that health officials and communities can use to break through bureaucratic silos, take personal action, and engage likely and unlikely partners. We’ll be talking about how these strategies can enable people to transform their community into a place that promotes physical activity and healthy eating, while simultaneously improving public space and community development.

PPS instructors will use their experience in working with a wide range of agencies, organizations, and interest groups, along with case studies and recent research, to demonstrate the need, opportunities, and methods by which community health can be improved.

A new “Healthy Places Audit” will be developed for use during the trainings. The audit will allow participants to understand first-hand the barriers and possibilities of changing the built environment to improve public health.

The trainings will be delivered by Aurash Khawarzad and Kelly Verel of PPS. Come with your community partners (planners, county officials, business owners, etc.) to this FREE event.

We wish to thank our partners for their collaboration on delivering these regional trainings.

Batavia Town Center Brownsville Partnership Recreation Center
CNY Community Foundation
Elsmere Fire Department
Harrietstown Town Center at Saranac Lake
Sustainability Institute at Molloy College
Vision Long Island

Photo: Wally Gobetz via Flickr.

PPS is thrilled to announce that we’ve been awarded a grant from the Kresge Foundation for our program, “Rebuilding Detroit Neighborhoods through Placemaking and the Power of 10.”

PPS hopes this new project will lead to more markets like Detroit’s Eastern Market, which has become a community center as well as a hub for fresh, healthy food.

The program will be piloted in two neighborhoods this year, and hopefully expanded to other neighborhoods in the future.   The planning process with each community will support a broader city-visioning process funded by the Kresge Foundation called “Detroit Works.”

Place-based Governance in Michigan
This work will continue to advance Michigan’s groundbreaking commitment to Place-based Governance, established by the state’s new governor, Rick Snyder, through his first Special Message to the State Legislature which established Placemaking as a state-wide economic development strategy.

Movable seating in Campus Martius, Detroit

About The Kresge Foundation
Headquartered in metro Detroit, The Kresge Foundation is a $3.1 billion private, national foundation that seeks to influence the quality of life for future generations through its support of nonprofit organizations in six fields of interest including arts and culture, community development, education, the environment, health, and human services.

The Kresge Foundation’s commitment to its Detroit Program reflects the organization’s deep roots in the city.  Since its founding in 1924, Kresge Foundation has provided continuous philanthropic support to the area’s nonprofit organizations and community initiatives. In the 1990s and early 2000s, this support was coordinated by our Detroit Initiative, which focused primarily on strengthening civic institutions and building new public gathering spaces, such as the RiverWalk and Campus Martius Park, a project for which PPS worked with the community to develop a vision for a park that would become, in the Mayor’s words, “the best public space in the world.” PPS’ design suggestions envisioned an entire district of public uses to tie the park into a larger, city-wide revitalization.

A cafe at Detroit's Eastern Market

For almost eight years, PPS worked with the city of Detroit and stakeholders at the city’s renowned Eastern Market on revitalization strategy.  The Kresge Foundation has been a leading supporter in the renovation of the market’s historic sheds and of the market’s ongoing community programming.   Today the Eastern Market is once again one of the largest and most vibrant market districts in the US.

Kresge uses a values-criteria to guide their grantmaking, which aims to create access and advance opportunity for marginalized populations, promote community impact in ways most needed by residents, cultivate innovation and risk taking, support interdisciplinary solutions, reach under-served locales, foster environmental sustainability, and encourage nonprofit boards and their staffs to reflect the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of the people they serve. PPS is honored to have been selected.

For more information about this project feel free to contact Steve Davies at sdavies@pps.org.

Are you in Detroit? Tell us about how to improve your local markets in the comments below.

A market in Hong Kong confers many benefits to its neighborhood.

New research on public marketplaces and their potential to spur local economic, social and political development cites many PPS studies and is closely in line with PPS’ approach to markets, which emphasizes that successful public markets achieve these three goals:

• they’re great community gathering places
• they’re economically sustainable
• they have a  broad impact on their community’s development.

This convergence is what makes successful public markets not only good for vendors and customers but also for good the market’s surrounding community.

Marketplaces as Tools for Planning and Public Policy
The report, Marketplaces: Prospects for Economic, Social and Political Development (free PDF, registration required for download) by Alfonso Morales of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “shows how marketplaces were once tools of nascent planning and public policy, describes the reasons they should be again, and shows how planners and policy makers can advance public purposes through markets.”  For Morales, “…the marketplace represents one route to community redevelopment in the broadest sense.”

The research cites PPS studies throughout, including:

• Public Markets as a Vehicle for Social Integration and Upward Mobility, prepared with Partners for Livable Communities for the Ford Foundation, 2003

• Public Markets and Community-Based Food Systems: Making them Work in Lower Income Communities, prepared with Partners for Livable Communities for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2003.

• Public Markets and Community Revitalization, published jointly with the Urban Land Institute and PPS, 1995.

Markets Can Release a Community’s Creativity
The report focuses on the many, varied impacts marketplaces can have on the public realm and explains that “markets release the creative, recreational, civic, and economic energies between the community and the individuals who compose it…. Markets connect the natural world to the urban environment, and the two-way connection raises hopes in both that communities will develop economically, that farmland and food systems will be protected, that individual health will be improved, and that the natural and local will supplement the engineered and global urban environment.

…The market provides a ‘halo effect’ in a community, and a vibrant market is auto-catalytic, producing positive feedback loops in civic, economic, and social life. Although the market represents the community, its connections, and its aspirations, it takes relationships between outsiders and insiders to catalyze these aspects of community and to make operational symbolic hopes individuals have for themselves and their community.”

Want to learn more?
PPS has a number of resources on markets that can help you get started creating a great community place- in addition to a number of useful books and publications like SNAP/EBT at your Farmers Market: 7 Steps to Success.

Attend our next training course!
How to Create Successful Markets in New York City this month (May 20 and 21).

Register now for PPS upcoming training session, “How to Create Successful Markets,” May 20-21 in New York City.

 

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While the number of new markets in Maine continue to grow, most of what I heard people talk about at the conference was how their established market is being asked to expand operations and take on a larger role in the life of the community.

Markets across the state are expanding the number of days they are open and adding second locations, accepting SNAP/EBT, selling local products online, and even operating year-round. While this growth is exciting it also is challenging, especially because so many of the state’s markets are operated by volunteers.

As markets in Maine and across the country are increasingly recognized as important community assets, they need help taking on larger responsibilities. No matter whether your market is new or established and undergoing growing pains, these principles can help make it succeed both as a market and as a great community place.

4 Guidelines for Creating a Great Public Market

A market on Rue Mouffetard in Paris

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Meg MacIver contributed to this post.

Cleveland’s historic West Side Market is an incubator for over 100 locally-owned food businesses

We’re excited to announce that Cleveland has been selected to host the 8th International Public Markets Conference.

The 3-day event, planned for September or October of 2012, will bring together over 300 participants including noted planners and designers, accomplished market managers, and visionary leaders in a unique opportunity to focus together on the past, present and future of markets worldwide.

Exact dates and locations will be announced this autumn. For more information, please contact Kelly Verel at kverel@pps.org.

One of 20 cities to compete for the chance to host the conference, Cleveland has been selected from a group of five finalists including London, England; Toronto, Ontario; Seattle, Washington and Charleston, South Carolina.

The conference will align with the City’s celebration of the centennial year of the historic West Side Market. “Cleveland should be proud of the longevity of the West Side Market – one of the few remaining historic public markets in the U.S,” says PPS Senior Vice President Steve Davies, “and conference participants will also learn a great deal from the region’s expanding farmers markets which are sparking revitalization, job growth and healthy living.”

Cleveland and the Market were singled out by the Travel Channel as the best culinary secret in America, and the West Side Market was named by the Food Network  as the “Best Food Lover’s Market”  in the country in September of 2010. Even Travel and Leisure Magazine says “Cleveland shines brightly on the map of new American food destinations” and highlights the Market as a must-see destination.  The American Planning Association designated the market as one of America’s “10 Great Public Spaces,” and it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The exterior of Cleveland’s historic West Side Market, circa 1912

City leaders in Cleveland have become known as champions for local food, urban agriculture and healthy living, passing legislation to allow backyard chickens and bees, leading the country in vacant land reuse and urban agriculture. As recently as this month, they joined forces with local hospitals to tackle city-wide health through healthy eating.

PPS will co-host the conference with the Ohio City Near West Development Corporation as the organization dedicated to developing, preserving, and promoting Ohio City, the neighborhood anchored by the West Side Market.

Cleveland’s local press has enthusiastic coverage of the announcement:

• Cleveland to Host 8th International Public Markets Conference in 2012
• Cleveland Picked for Public Markets Conference
• Cleveland, West Side Market, Tapped to Host International Public Markets Conference in 2012
• Cleveland Beats out National and International Competition to Host the 2012 PPS Conference
• West Side Market Cleveland to Host International Public Markets Conference

The East Lake Farmers Market is one of Birmingham's existing centers for fresh food

PPS has long known that public markets play a key role in alleviating these health concerns. Partnering with Main Street Birmingham and, supported by funding from the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) program, PPS led a Placemaking workshop last summer and worked with local residents to help them build a vision for markets in their city.  The community’s participation will inform a study, which had two primary objectives:

• Increase the number and accessibility of quality markets in “food imbalanced” neighborhoods
• Coordinate and connect many market-related activities through a local Market Alliance

PPS’ markets team has proposed what we call “Healthy Food Hubs” throughout the city of Birmingham.  These hubs are places where people can do much more than just buy fresh, affordable food.  Food Hubs are vibrant community centers where neighbors can meet each other, attend cooking classes, learn about nutrition, and get health care.

Based on feedback from residents and the city’s various demographics, several concepts were proposed, including community garden-based farmers markets and the expansion and integration of the peddler and farm stand systems into retail and civic areas.

A plan for a Healthy Food Hub on Birmingham's Main Street.

For a city like Birmingham, recently named America’s second most obese city according to Forbes, where 31.3% of Birmingham’s residents have a BMI of 30 or higher, there can be no “silver bullet” solution. Providing all neighborhoods with access to healthy, fresh food is one way to start to mitigate obesity-related health concerns.

Download this guide for free.

The next step in implementing these initiatives in Birmingham is to find sponsors who will fund the the Market Alliance to begin work to start new Healthy Food Hubs, to connect community groups to the movement, and to set up a process for markets to accept SNAP (food stamps) and other Federal nutrition assistance coupons.

Main Street Birmingham’s Sam Crawford believes that “PPS has given the City of Birmingham and its many partners an excellent tool that will be used to establish a network of ‘public spaces’ that can become catalysts for further economic opportunity and where residents can work, play and access healthy foods in a safe friendly environment.”  We at PPS are also optimistic about the prospects of changing food and public space access in Birmingham and using public markets to improve the public health of the city.

Looking to set up SNAP at your market? Download a free copy of PPS’ Guide “SNAP/EBT at Your Farmer’s Market: Seven Steps to Success.”

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To learn more about setting up a great market in your neighborhood, come to PPS’ Spring Training session “How to Create Successful Markets,” May 20-21 in New York City.

The Rose Kennedy Greenway borders Parcel 7, which can be seen to in the background on the right.

The process for creating this indoor market began over a decade ago, and in 2008 PPS conducted a feasibility study to determine if there could be an expanded market district in the section of Boston adjacent to the Haymarket and City Hall.  Now that MassDOT and the Department of Agricultural Resources (DAR) are moving forward with the development of Parcel 7, PPS has been selected to create a conceptual guide for the market.

While in Boston last week, the PPS team held a focus group to begin assessing consumers’ needs and preferences.  Attendees were asked about their shopping habits and were shown a number of photos of existing markets around the world to gauge their responses.  PPS will likely hold public meetings during future site visits in order to receive additional input, which will help make the public market a vibrant destination that balances the needs of downtown residents and workers with those of tourists and people living in nearby neighborhoods and surrounding towns.

Now that the public market project is officially underway, PPS will begin constructing a framework for its management, design and product offerings.  Among other tasks, the markets team will:

• Propose an operational and governance structure suited to the market’s distinct needs
• Plan the physical design of the market, incorporating gathering spaces into the layout
• Interview local producers and vendors to better understand their operational needs and plan for the market’s possible product mix.

A number of key factors position the Boston Public Market to be an anchor destination (much needed) along the Rose Kennedy Greenway, such as its proximity to Faneuil Hall, the Haymarket, and multiple subway stops.  Although the project has just begun, PPS is optimistic that it will further enliven an already popular district by strengthening the social and economic capital of the surrounding area.

PPS Vice President Phil Myrick and Senior Vice President Steve Davies are both big fans of Vienna’s Rathaus Christmas market because it’s a destination that attracts people and encourages solidarity among the Viennese, regardless of the inclement weather.  Steve is particularly fond of the hot mulled wine offered at a number of kiosks, keeping patrons in good spirits despite freezing temperatures.

The Rathaus market attracts Viennese to the city center, even in the dead of winter.

Other PPS employees enjoy New York City’s Union Square Holiday Market, which is located just up the street from our offices.  Vendors from around the Northeast US sell artisanal items and seasonal beverages and food.  Union Square is one of the most popular meet-up spots for New Yorkers, and even in winter it is still a great place to congregate.

NYC's Union Square Holiday Market is a huge draw for an already bustling plaza.

Edinburgh, Scotland’s Winter Festival is one of the more ambitious outdoor holiday markets.  Combining a marketplace with a carnival, visitors can enjoy a number of activities that aren’t usually associated with wintertime, such as a carousel and merry-go-round.

Edinburgh's Winter Festival combines typical wintertime attractions with those you might find at a summer fair.

These examples show that there is no one way to curate a great winter market — what does your local holiday market offer that makes it unique?