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

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.

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.