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Hi Folks,

A recent competition for designing farmers markets was hosted by GOOD magazine. Please have a look at: http://www.good.is/post/redesign-your-farmers-market-winners/

A student of mine, Josh Donaldson, and I submitted an entry, you can see it in the markets journal!

best to all,
Alfonso

Folks,

Sean Basinski, of the New York's Street Vendor Project, is recently returning from a Fulbright Fellowship in Lagos. He composed the report, "All Fingers are Not Equal." It will be of great interest!

Contact him directly at sbasinski@urbanjustice.org

Find the report on the Markets Journal section of the webpage!

all best,
Alfonso

Recently a student of mine forwarded me this email request for help:

Greetings--

I'm looking for folk who work in communities that regulate street
vendors and peddlers.

You fit the bill, you say?

Great. So, tell me how you handle requests by peddlers/vendors who want,
say, to run a shaved ice cart in front of a boutique--with the boutique
owner's support, of course--for a month.

Do you allow it?

And, if you do allow this sort of thing, is there ever a point (hours per
week/weeks per year) where you conclude the peddler/vendor is doing things
that warrant a look at the approvals pertaining to the site (e.g., site
plan approval)?

What defines that point?

Thanks for any input. And if you can, please provide a copy of your
response to X A CITY PLANNER IN THE NORTHEAST.

I responded and asked her to send the following (I HOPE IT HELPS FOLKS!):

Greening our cities requires action on a whole number of fronts. Transportation and energy figure prominently in the equation. Getting people out of single-occupancy cars and into alternate modes of transportation, including bicycling and public transportation is one step. Building smart so as to minimize the amount of energy consumed in building, heating, and cooling buildings, and getting to and from them (think proximity to public transportation nodes) is another. But there are other fronts, too. One of them is food.

Food systems are as much a part of greening our cities as transportation and energy systems. What we eat and where we buy it has significant impacts on the environment and, of course, on human health. More calls have been made to bring the farm back to the city. Locally grown produce requires less energy to transport the ultimate consumer. It also tastes better, encouraging people to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. This of course ties back to health care. People who eat right require less medical care, and this savings inures to their benefit and those who insure them. Work on health care reform should include work on what we eat.

This afternoon I met Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore's Dilemma. His writing about local food systems has already inspired me. The movement toward buying locally grown food ties in well with my own advocacy for open air markets, including farmer's markets and street vendors. I went to an event sponsored by Dosa, Inc. in Los Angeles where I heard Pollan was going to speak, expecting to hear more about local food. I learned so much more than that.

Pollan didn't speak about food per se, but rather about collaboration. He engaged in a converstation with his wife, Judith Belzor, an artist, and Christina Kim, a fashion designer. The theme of the talk was collaboration. Pollan and Belzor shared space while each worked on their own project, and Pollan, an editor by training, would "edit" the artwork being created by Belzor, suggesting an addition here and a deletion there. Kim and Belzor collabored on an art installation, with Kim supplying the space-- an open and airy top floor of an old Broadway office building-- and Belzor supplying the art that fit so well with the space.

"There is a myth that the artist creates in solitude," said Pollan. Artists are part of an artistic tradition and context, and so collaboration is an essential part of the creative process.