Market shoppers are often seen as passive consumers following shopping trends. In fact, many of them are getting organised and mobilised to save and promote their markets. They see themselves not just as market customers but as citizens who regard markets as a key resource for a fairer city.
We have researched eight campaigns focused on urban markets. Citizens mobilise when their markets are affected by regeneration, demolition or relocation, often after a period of neglect and underinvestment. Campaigning on markets can include objecting to new developments outright, fighting rent rises, improving democratic input into regeneration plans, opposing trader displacement and keeping the market unique, inclusive and affordable.
Several groups have mounted legal challenges (such as judicial reviews of planning decisions), some successfully. Other tactics include petitions, lobbying the local authority, demonstrations, collaborative research (e.g. surveys of customers) and promotional events. Much of this work is directed towards the local authority, especially in cases where the market is publicly owned and/or run.
Friends of Queen's Market has been campaigning since 2003 to stop the demolition of their market and promote its social and economic function for their neighbourhood in East London. In 2010 Friends of Brixton Market successfully opposed Lambeth Council’s plans to demolish parts of an arcade.
Similarly, the Wards Corner Community Coalition came together in 2007 to block a development by a developer that would have demolished their market. These groups have fought legal challenges claiming that proposed redevelopment projects in markets would negatively affect those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
In London in particular, market campaigns also make demands over housing, transport issues and public space more widely. The largest example of this is the evolution of a Development Trust to construct, own and manage the market hall at Ward’s Corner and the strong campaign link made by FoQM between affordable public (social) housing and the success of the market.
Further afield, Leeds campaigners demonstrated that market shoppers tend to come from areas of higher deprivation, and in Birmingham, traders fear that changes to transport infrastructure are one reason for customer decline. Markets stand out as the only truly public retail spaces in towns and cities, and it is unsurprising that campaigners reflect and amplify wider local concerns about public space, use and ownership.
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FURTHER READING
Gonzalez S; Dawson G (2015) Traditional Markets Under Threat: Why It's Happening and What Traders and Customers Can Do, Antipode Awards 2015/2016
Gonzalez S; Dawson G (2015) Campaigning to Defend Traditional Markets: A Short Guide, Antipode Awards 2015/2016
Gonzalez S; Waley P (2013) Traditional retail markets: The new gentrification frontier?, Antipode, 45, pp.965-983. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01040.x
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Mission For Markets is a campaign run jointly by NABMA and NMTF
