Bringing Food to the Streets – the Edible City

A flash corn mob erupts otside of the Royal Ontario Museum. Phone-savvy food enthusiasts rush out to get a deal on the fresh harvest.

Last week Coach House Books held an event at the Gladstone Hotel, to launch there new book of essays concerning food and the city (Toronto). As I mentioned in the previous post, the book features an essay of mine, which explores different ways to make open-air fresh food vending more available throughout the city. I’ve post the essay here for you to read in its entirety:

Bringing food to the street: Strategies for ubiquitous food markets in Toronto

What if there was a fresh produce stand where you wanted it when you wanted it? What if shopping for fresh food in the city was a spontaneous act rather than a planned one? And what if many of the city’s major street corners, subway entrances and public spaces were decorated with the sights and smells of fresh fruits and vegetables? Toronto is on the cusp of a potential food-market revolution; interest in fresh organic and locally grown foods has expanded in the last decade, and the number of farmers’ markets in the city has grown rapidly – from a handful ten years ago to twenty-nine at the time of writing. Two new markets hit the streets in the summer season of 2009, and ten markets were started up between 2007 and 2009 alone. Regardless of this growth, shopping at local markets remains a marginal act in light of the overwhelming ubiquity, convenience and relative cheapness of supermarkets. Is there a way to overcome this convenience price gap so fresh-food vending in the city can become more prevalent? Can Toronto harness the inherent qualities of open-air markets – their flexibility and mobility – to become a city of ubiquitous public food markets?

Agenda

What are the advantages of having more food vendors in the city? From a public-health point of view, making local, fresh and healthy foods more readily and conveniently available just makes sense, provided that the system is properly regulated for health standards. By putting fresh foods on the streets, at the intersections of our daily routines, we become more inclined to buy those foods instead of the junk, processed and take-away foods that are so readily available. An expanded market system would also help to diversify the retail food industry – a notoriously concentrated industry – and would support local farmers while also creating new vending jobs. There’s also a third perspective – one that, as an urban designer, I have a specific interest in – and that’s the impact a system like this would have on public space. Since the first conception of cities, and lasting up until the nineteenth century, the marketplace held a crucial position in the social, civic, economic and political life of cities and their

citizens. While its primary function was the exchange of goods, the market was also a main meeting place for people, a place to get news and gossip, listen to political speeches, watch sports and spectacles and demonstrate beliefs and opinions. With major religious and political institutions almost always close by, the market was also a crossroads for people coming fromand going to these various institutions. This intricate layering of programming created a dynamic and vibrant public situation rarely seen in other parts of the city. Although the layout of most modern cities has changed dramatically since then, the open-air markets that have endured remain critical incubators of interesting and unique public happenings and encounters. In an urban North American context, where the quality of public space – and its perceived decline – is a major urban-planning issue, supporting a program of open-air markets could be a powerful tool in defending and increasing the quality of public space in our cities.

Against the ubiquity of supermarkets

With few exceptions, the atmosphere in supermarkets is the antithesis of the vibrancy and diversity of the traditional marketplace. While some argue that supermarkets are ersatz public spaces, where shoppers run into acquaintances, flirt, people-watch and generally feel a connection to their community, the fact remains that they are privately owned buildings under corporate control. To their credit, many supermarket chains have attempted to create a market-like feel in some of their large-format stores, reintegrating services like the baker and the butcher, offering activities like cooking classes and demonstrations, and adding cafes, florists and wine shops into their buildings. However, the basic problem of context is inescapable: these stores are often set back on sprawling lots and surrounded by parking, the land they sit on located in big box-zoned commercial areas that are inaccessible to many. The kind of community-led programming and use that defines public spaces just isn’t encouraged within their walls. This is not to discredit supermarkets unconditionally. The innovations and efficiencies introduced by the supermarket system– logistics, networks of distribution centres, just-in-time delivery – have proven an effective way to feed our increasingly growing cities while lowering food-spoilage rates. However, this shouldn’t stop us from looking for alternatives that mix healthy food shopping with vibrant public spaces. Might there even be a way to incorporate the efficiencies of the supermarket into an open-air market system?

Strategies for expanding market vending

1. The farmer doesn’t have to be the vendor

Renewed interest in open-air markets in North America revolves around the concept of the farmers’ market. The main justification for reviving the market concept seems to be the desire for a stronger sense of community and connection to food and the region it comes from, a connection achieved through a short verbal and cash transaction with the producer. This goal of bringing farmers in contact with consumers – however laudable – may have to be re-prioritized to bring more small-scale food vending to the city. Already, farmers’ market advocates experience difficulty in convincing enough farmers to travel into the city to sell at the markets. Participating in a farmers’ market means organizing the time, staff, equipment and vehicles to attend the market, and gambling with weather and customer attendance from week to week. Farmers with existing business relationships with wholesalers are unlikely to want to take on the added risk and effort of participating in a farmers’ market. One possible remedy is to encourage independent or farmer-hired vendors to do most of the vending at the markets. Vendors would be able to devote more time and attention to customer needs and trends, marketing and promotion activities, and would act as the go-between between customer and grower. The spirit of the farmers’ markets would be sustained, since the products would still be local and the vendors independent, but responsibilities would be more evenly distributed.

2. Bringing it to the crossroads

Open-air markets have the ability to revitalize public spaces, but they aren’t public-space miracle workers. They need to be located in places that already carry the potential to become dynamic public spaces. Placing a market on the periphery – in a parking lot, set back in a park or away frombusy intersections – severely limits the number of incidental customers it can serve and restricts market shopping to a planned activity. To get more people shopping at open-air markets, it’s vital that they become more visible, located at the crossroads of our daily routines. This calls for a programthat will map out new city spaces suitable for outdoor food vending. Since the City is responsible for licensing any kind of outdoor vending, it must play the leading role in this endeavour, encouraging food vending at strategic locations. These spaces can vary in size – some might only accommodate one stand, while others might house a full-fledged market of anywhere fromtwenty to 100 stands. It is common practice in many cities around the world – for instance, in Montreal, Mexico City and Rome – to see medium-sized markets selling everything fromproduce to flowers and crafts located at the entrances of metro stations. Allowing just one or two fresh produce stands outside of each subway station would increase the visibility and convenience of fresh foods in the city. While these spaces might not boast the conviviality of a full-fledged market, they would certainly make subway entrances more interesting places. The City should also consider licensing mobile units that service major events. In Mexico City, whenever there is a bullfight or soccer match, a cluster of market and food stands pop up to feed hungry spectators. These same vendors then move to Chapultepec Park to feed Sunday strollers. Mobile units in Toronto could do the same thing outside of hockey arenas, theatres, etc. Here the focus would be on healthy prepared and take-away foods. The next challenge would be to find adequate spaces that can house larger markets. This can be tricky, since these spaces have to be large enough to house a temporary event, while central enough to attract a large number of visitors. Here again, the market’s mobility is an asset. While the amount of permanently empty space in the city is limited, there are a substantial number of temporarily vacant spaces – often spaces awaiting development – that could be used for market purposes. When such a space is ready to be developed, the market could simply move to its next location. Berlin has the quintessential example of this type of public-space use, having long followed a policy of in-between uses (Zwischennutzung) as a method for keeping vacant spaces vital and used. Makeshift beach clubs, skate parks, graffiti galleries and driving ranges in temporary spaces dot the city and create a sense of fluidity.

3. The City steps up

A few years ago a group called Multistory Complex started to make noise about the lack of diverse and healthy take-away foods being sold on the streets of Toronto. The ubiquity of hot-dog vendors in the city – partly caused by bureaucratic red tape that made it impossible to sell anything else – was a poor reflection of the city’s actual culinary diversity and did nothing to support healthy eating habits. Fortunately, with enough political pressure, the City stepped up to introduce a pilot project, Toronto a la Cart, which allows vendors to sell different kinds of prepared healthy foods. Chicken biryani, samosas and souvlaki can now be enjoyed fromvending carts scattered around the city. If Toronto wants to see an expansion of markets and fresh food vending on its streets, the City will have to step up again, providing the administration and regulation of vending activities. Market sites will have to be monitored, licences will have to be issued, studies will have to be prepared – not to sully efforts at open-air vending, but to nurture and foster them. In Holland – a country with a vibrant network of open-air markets – it is written into each civic constitution that the city government must provide the administration and guidance for market operations. Every municipal government has a department devoted to regulating markets, which negotiates between the demands of several actors, most notably the vendors’ union. In Toronto, grassroots efforts for farmers’ markets can go only so far. At some point the City will have to play an increasing role.

4. Use the technology

Large retailers rely more and more on information-communication technologies to keep tabs on supply and demand, technologies that give themhuge competitive advantages over smaller retailers. While market vendors will always be limited by season and proximity, they can be flexible in the kinds and quantities of stock they carry. A variety of possibilities are just waiting to be tested. Vendors could keep text-message mailing lists of devout customers, sending them up-to-the-minute updates on new harvests, sales times and locations, creating veritable ‘flash corn mobs’ – spontaneous convergences of vendors and customers in public space. Conversely, customers could use this same technology to notify vendors of events requiring an apple stand or a watermelon hookup. Facebook groups could form an easy platform for customers and vendors to communicate and share opinions and information. Mobile phones with gps functionality could help customers track their favourite vendors in the city at any given time – an iPhone app that does just that begs to be developed. Information-communication technology is cheaper and more accessible than ever before, ripe to be exploited by food vendors, farmers and customers who want to become better connected and networked.

5. The new regionalism

Many city regions are currently experiencing a diversification of food tastes and desires, coupled with newsmall-scale regional production techniques. Steef Buijs, an Amsterdambased urban planner who has worked on food issues since the 1960s, has noted that the world of food production is splitting between staple foods and specialty foods. While staple food production will most likely continue to concentrate and expand using industrial farming techniques, an increasing demand for specialty foods can be accommodated regionally, and even within city limits, in the formof urban agriculture such as rooftop gardens. Architects and planners are discovering new ways to incorporate farming into urban areas. German architects have demonstrated how abandoned concrete-slab apartments can be turned into vertical mushroom farms. Dutch architect Winy Maas from the firm mvrdv has shown how previously unimaginable configurations of production can be housed in dense urban structures – most notably in his vertical pig farm. The more this demand becomes specific and local, the greater the incentive to grow locally. This potential increase in small-scale local and urban production has new implications for food markets. More local food production means an increased capacity for farmers’ markets, which could lead to new relationships between vendors and producers in the city. Whereas larger retailers require substantial resources to gather and store their stock in regional distribution centres, small producers could store their own stock in on-site warehouses, where vendors would pick up their goods on the day of sale. No longer dependent on one gigantic centralized food terminal, vendors could navigate city streets on their way to various events, picking up supplies from a series of producers. Of course, this is dependent on the level of concentration of urban food producers. Another option would be to create smaller distribution and collection nodes for producers and vendors, similar to how FoodShare acts as its own distribution centre for its Good Food Box program. Such nodes could also act as co-ops, where vendors and producers could communicate to each other through consumer feedback and supply-and-demand analysis. With increasing demand for local food production, Toronto’s foodscape could find ways to reorient itself towards a networked structure of small-scale mobile food vendors and food producers that would make market vending and local food production synergistic and competitively advantageous acts.

Changing attitudes: Finding a new balance in food retail

The growing popularity of farmers’ markets in Toronto is an encouraging sign; not only do people want to eat healthier and support local farmers, they’re also searching for more engaging and lively public experiences in their food-shopping routines. These changes can spur the expansion of market vending practices in the city. It might seem like a daunting task, especially to those familiar with the commanding position large food retailers have in the sector, but open-air vending and food markets are flexible and mobile, two assets that can give thema competitive advantage over supermarkets. The last and most vital shift needed to accommodate this change lies with consumers. We have grown up as a society of stock-up shoppers – we go to the supermarket twice a month, often by car, to buy enough food to last us as long as possible. Part of the reason supermarkets are so successful is that they offer one-stop shopping. If we were to shift even slightly from a society of stock-up shopping to a society of top-up shopping, we would greatly increase the viability of small grocers and outdoor vendors. A civic culture of food can be changed more easily than we think. It just needs to take place on the street.