Provide for Community Needs
When I lived in Basel from 2013 to 2016, I encountered difficulties in integration due to my non-fluency in the German language, my non-familiarity with the traditions and culture of Switzerland, and our lack of friends during the early part of stay in the country. As I encountered cold and gloomy days, I pushed myself out of the apartment and tried to explore as many parts of the city. I found myself frequently going to the Markthalle, a food hall located along the main tram line and near other areas which I frequently stopped by, like groceries and museums.
I always patronized the Thai stall, where an ethnic Thai immigrant lady would cook the most delicious pad thai. It was quite affordable at Sfr 8 (equivalent to US$ 8). I would also exchange stories with a Filipino chef, who started a sushi stall. He was a chef in a cruise ship, before deciding to migrate to Switzerland. I would ask him about how his business was doing and how much he paid for his rent. He would give me an extra piece or two of sushi to savor. I was impressed that a lot of the stall vendors at the Basel Markthhalle were immigrants, offering prepared food from their native countries. Even then, I realized that the food hall was a good way for immigrants to start a business because of the lower amount of capital needed.
Basel Markthalle Sample Food Hall Stalls
Abyssinia – spicy Ethiopian cuisine
Acento Argentino – empanadas, beef steaks, vegetables and fresh salads
Amanis Afghan Food – hot and cool Afghan cuisine
Dabbawala’s Indian Kitchen – vegan and vegetarian Indian cuisine with homemade drinks like mango-lassi
Dragon Girl Dumplings – fine Chinese dumplings with various fillings
Goi’s Thai Kitchen – Thai menu and snacks
Greek Soul Food – Mediterranean Greek cuisine from Cevapcici to Souvlaki
La Arepera – the best of Venezuelan cuisine: arepas, patacones, gulfeados, and homemade papelon con limon
Non La – Vietnamese street food”
— Basel Markthalle Website [2]
Planning for a food hall to address a community’s goals of integration and social capital is much more complicated than trying to increase familiarity and social interaction. These are deeper and longer-term objectives, which need to be stated and planned for up front, to ensure that they are met. To achieve integration and hopefully build social capital too, a food hall must address the specific needs of the community [15-17, 21, 22, 25].
Community Benefit
Food halls must be planned with the end goal that they are primarily for the use of, benefit of, and in support of the community [21, 23, 26]. Despite the large economic impact which local tourists and foreign visitors can bring to a planned food hall, they must not be the primary target market for which the food halls are planned and built 6, 7, 11, 20. If we want food halls to help increase social engagement in the community, we must plan them with the community residents as the primary target market. We should also prioritize their needs, especially in a situation where we have to choose between them and the tourists.
“Barcelona City Hall has spent €133m renovating local markets in the past four years. Over recent decades, 34 out of its network of 40 markets have been overhauled at a cost that would make a British city council choke on their spreadsheets. Various political factions have been in and out of power but nobody has ever argued that the city shouldn’t run the markets? Blasi, back at City Hall, looks at me with something that in a less polished diplomat might have been pity. ”
— Barcelona’s Market Forca, The Financial Times [10]
Successful food halls, particularly, need to prioritize the community in their decision making. A large influx of visitors brings in a range of issues such as parking, overcrowding, and reduced access for the locals [3]. Increased demand from tourists can also impact on the affordability of food items [3]. Lastly, successful food halls can bring in the negative effects of gentrification in the neighborhood [6, 7, 20, 22, 25]. The community must take steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen by also putting in place policies which help support both the vendors and the residents.
Involve the Community in the Visioning or Planning Process
In planning, we are often reminded that communities know best what they need. When we involve the community residents in the planning process for a food hall, they will bring in their knowledge of local conditions, their understanding of the community needs, and their intimate experience with food traditions that reflect the community’s spirit [14, 16, 22, 25].
“Findlay Market Core Values
Local: We value freshness above all, emphasizing a variety of locally grown food and unique, locally created products sold by people we know as friends and neighbors. We embrace our role as a vital anchor for a strengthened central city and Over the Rhine
Authentic: We value genuine human connections and social interactions that a vibrant, dynamic public marketplace promotes. We value the diversity in all definitions that exists among our merchants and our shoppers.
Value-minded: We believe in providing our shoppers fresh, high quality foods at fair prices and a rich product array that will satisfy a wide range of shopper needs. We provide an inclusive shopping experience that is unparalleled in our region.
Entrepreneurial: We create a supported environment for diverse startup businesses and the growth and sustainability of locally owned and managed businesses.
Responsible: We honor our role as stewards of a thriving landmark and demand integrity in our interactions with our shoppers, merchants, employees, volunteers, and community partners.”
— Findlay Market website
Core Values [4]
Community residents will identify different objectives which they would like a food hall to deliver. These objectives will include economic ones, like providing opportunities for the vendors/entrepreneurs and jobs for workers [15, 17, 18]. They would understandably want to bring in visitors as well, to increase the economic feasibility of the food hall [3, 5, 11, 13]. Depending on the location, a food hall’s main goal may be to provide a venue for unique food experience for a downtown which needs revitalization, an affordable source of food for a particularly low-income neighborhood, or both [22, 25].
Likely, the community will also bring in the objective of using the food hall as a public space where the community can gather together and increase social cohesion. Most communities will need food halls and fresh produce markets to work hand in hand, to achieve the objective of providing access to healthy food alternatives [22, 25].
Regardless of what needs the community residents identify, what is important is that the community is involved, not only at the start of the planning process but on a continuing basis, in planning what a food hall should accomplish for their neighborhood.
Granville Island 2018 Year in Review Report
Image courtesy of the Granville Island website [9]
Granville Island 2040: Bridging Past & Future Report
Four Key Strategies
Improve Access
Expand the Public Market & Create a Market District
Embrace Arts & Innovation
Restore & Sustain the Public Realm
— Granville Island Year in Review [9] page 5
In addition, an important step towards providing for community needs is making sure that all sectors of the community are adequately represented during any planning or decision making process [8, 12, 19]. With the insight and knowledge of people who well represent minority groups, the food hall can be planned to serve their special needs, whether as vendors, workers, or customers.
Getting the community active and working together to plan for the food hall will also start the process of building social capital [8, 12, 19, 27]. With greater understanding of the concerns and needs of other people in the community, residents who work together are more likely to work on other initiatives, whether related to the food hall or other corollary community needs.
Continuous Engagement
Addressing the community’s needs will not stop once the food hall is in operation. Given changes in consumer preferences and market forces, the food hall must constantly review its strategy and goals in relation to the community’s needs [11, 15, 17, 22, 25].
“As Barcelona developed through the 19th and 20th centuries, planners built neighbourhood markets and, throughout its politically turbulent history, the city never relinquished ownership. In the years leading up to Franco’s death, the markets fell into decline but 20 years ago, with a display of organised, collective vigour that may be uniquely Catalan, Barcelona committed to its markets and began to invest.”
— Barcelona’s Market Forca
The Financial Times [10]
Ideally, the food hall’s ownership and management must be through a partnership with a nonprofit or an organization of vendors and community representatives, who will always work towards a common set of community goals [15, 17, 22, 25]. In a situation where there is a private-public sector partnership, policies must be introduced early on, such that the checking on the needs of the community doesn’t stop after the food hall is in place.
“A major policy shift in 2011 led to the restarting of the government’s Hawker Center Building programme after a 26-year hiatus and the removal of reserve rents. As a result, hawker stall rents have dropped, giving aspiring entrepreneurs – no matter their financial background – an equal stab at success, while keeping hawker food affordable.”
— (Singapore) Hawker Centres
Levelling the Playing Field with Food [26] page 1
“The most important thing about management of the markets, Costa adds, is this collaboration between public and private. “The market is a municipal body which establishes the bylaws to manage the market. The traders have to pay for security, cleaning, etc. This is the main idea. But what we have been doing for the past 20 years is changing the markets, renewing them.
’When the market is in a bad situation, we first make a commercial analysis of the neighbourhood and the market. We decide the commercial mix that’s going to be profitable for everybody, then we design the market — the supermarket, the parking areas, the logistics underground.’ The idea, Costa says, is that ‘we revitalise the neighbourhood through the market. It’s a wider vision. We are not working only for the markets, we are working for the city.’”
— Barcelona’s Market Forca, The Financial Times [10]
In ensuring that a food hall provides for the community’s various needs, there are a lot of tools for collaborative community engagement which are available. The relevant tools will be dependent on the size of the community, what phase the planning is in, and the needs of the community which have been identified [8, 12, 19]. There is also a need to bring in partnerships with community stakeholders, who are experts in their fields of engagement [1, 24].
Sources:
'Arlington, a Six-Step Public Engagement Guide for Capital Projects', (Arlington City, Virginia 2018).
'Basel Markthalle Providers', 2019 <https://www.altemarkthalle.ch/anbieter/>.
Montserrat Crespi-Vallbona and Darko Dimitrovski, 'Urban Food Markets in the Context of a Tourist Attraction: La Boqueria Market in Barcelona Spain', Tourism Geographies, 20 (2018), 397-417.
'Findlay Market: Vision and Mission', <http://www.findlaymarket.org/mission-and-vision>.
'Food Halls of North America', (Cushman & Wakefield, 2018).
Karen Franck, 'The City as Dining Room, Market, and Farm', Architecture Design May/June 2005.
———, 'Food for the City, Food in the City', Architecture Design May/June 2005.
Archon Fung, 'Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance', Public Administration Review, 66 (2006), 66-75.
'Granville Island Year in Review', 2018 .
Tim Hayward, 'Barcelona's Market Forca', in Financial Times (London, United Kingdom 2015).
Edwin Heathcote, 'How Cities Can Harness the Power of the Market', in Financial Times (London, United Kingdom The Financial Times Ltd. , 2018).
Judith E. Innes and David E. Booher, 'Reframing Public Participation: Strategies for the 21st Century', Planning Theory & Practice, 5 (2004), 419-36.
Peter Jones, David Hillier, and Daphne Comfort, 'Changing Times and Changing Places for Market Halls and Covered Markets.', 2007.
'Making Your Market a Dynamic Community Place', (Project for Public Spaces, 2016).
Alfonso Morales, 'Marketplaces: Prospects for Social, Economic, and Political Development', Journal of Planning Literature, 26 (2011), 3-17.
———, 'Planning and the Self-Organization of Marketplaces', Journal of Planning Education & Research, 30 (2010), 182-97.
———, 'Public Markets as Community Development Tools', Journal of Planning Education and Research, 28 (2008), 426-40.
Alfonso Morales and Steven Balkin, 'The Value of Benefits of a Public Street Market: The Case of Maxwell Street', Economic Development Quarterly, 9 (1995), 304.
Tina Nabatchi and Matthew Leighninger, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy, Bryson Series in Public and Nonprofit Management (Hoboken, New Jersey, Jossey-Bass, 2015).
Susan Parham, 'Designing the Gastronomic Quarter', Architecture Design May/June 2005.
'Public Food Markets: Build Cities, Regions, and Revitalize Communities', (Toronto Public Food Markets Working Group, 2017).
'Public Markets as a Vehicle for Social Integration and Upward Mobility', in Phase I Report: An Overview of Existing Programs and Assessment of Opportunities (New York, New York, Project for Public Spaces, Inc. & Partners for Livable Communities, 2003).
'Report of the Hawker Centres’ Public Consultaltion Panel', (Singapore Ministry of the Environment & Water Resources).
'Spectrum of Public Participation', International Association for Public Participation, 2019 <https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/pillars/Spectrum_8.5x11_Print.pdf>.
David Studdert and Sophie Watson, Markets as Sites for Social Interaction: Spaces of Diversity, Public Spaces Series (Bristol, UK: Published for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by Policy Press, 2006.).
Ronnie Tay, 'Hawker Centres, Levelling the Playing Field with Food ', Urban Solutions, 2014.
Paul F. Whiteley, 'Social Capital', in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), ed. by James D. Wright (Oxford: Elsevier, 2015), pp. 174-80.