We protect what we care for and we care for what we understand.
This website should help you better understand the functions, importance, and variety of street markets and merchants as well as the larger social context in which they are found. This knowledge should be useful to merchants, shoppers, travelers, policy makers and academics of all types, law, business, social science, consumer researchers, historians and anyone else with an interest in this age-old form of trade.
We hope you can join with us to learn about and celebrate this important economic and social institution. We invite you to contribute to this website. The structure is simple:
-Discussion…of everything having to do with markets (once you’ve registered).
-Links to Markets, post your favorite market (once you’ve registered).
-Market Magazine, photos, advice for merchants and others, job postings, topics you would find in your local newspaper.
-Market Journal, some topics similar to MM but more scholarly discussions suited to urban planners, humanities, policy makers, social scientists, law and legal studies, consumer research, business, etc.
-Events, browse events and post your events (once you’ve registered).
Anyone can visit this website without the need to register. But if you want to add content such as a link or post in a discussion forum or if you wish to make a comment on a blog, you will need to register (found in the menu on the left). Those who want more involvement with OPENAIR such as uploading files, creating a node website for a market, writing a blog, adding images, etc. should go through 'about' to email a request to take on editorial responsibilities (appropriate to your interests and time).
We welcome your comments and suggestions regarding this, the new version of Openair. Those interested in content from the old page can access it below. Please be patient with our new page, register and work with us to make it the most useful in the world.
Thanks!
Also visit our 'sister' websites:
Editors in this web site have extended privileges and can contribute and edit content more effectively. If you wish to become an editor on this site, do the following:
a. Contact Alfonso Morales to request editor status, include your resume or CV.
This is the World Wide Guide to Farmers' Markets, Flea Markets, Street Markets, and Street Vendors. It is an all-volunteer research and educational project that aims to gather and provide information about open air marketplaces around the world, both formal and informal. This will aid (1) shoppers and tourists wanting to find out where inexpensive fun, good food, and bargains are all over the globe; (2) scholars, professionals, and planners who are interested in studying marketplace phenomena; and (3) vendors and farmers looking for places to sell or needing assistance. Every open air market related resource on the internet should be accessible from here.
An important function of this page will be to alert the world community about markets and their vendors in jeopardy of being shut down.
It is not necessary that a marketplace be literally out of doors to be covered here. Some markets are housed both outside and indoors; other markets are housed in sheds, tents, and under roofs of various kinds. What is important at this web site is that the marketplace function like an open air market: a location with little infrastructure providing low cost face-to-face buying and selling opportunities for the masses.
A downside of the internet is that it tends to further accentuate the divide between the haves and have nots -- information apartheid. It is hoped that this page works to counter some of that by providing assistance to this low tech sector of the world.
This site was conceived by Steve Balkin and Alfonso Morales with the aid of a board of advisors and the cyber help of Barbara Balkin. Steve is an economics professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago, director of the Self-Employment Research Project, a frequent visitor to open air markets, and an advocate who, with many others, tried but failed to save the old Maxwell Street Market in Chicago. This site is also managed by Alfonso Morales, a professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has done extensive field research on markets and, likewise, was an advocate for the old Maxwell Street Market.
Open air marketplaces function as business incubators and survival safety nets for people at the economic bottom, are fun places to shop, and promote sustainable development. They lower the consumers' cost of obtaining goods and services because they are an inexpensive way for people to market their wares in a friendly but competitive business environment. In some areas they are the only source of fresh produce and discount shopping. For vendors, they are a low cost way to start an enterprise, exchange information, build a reputation for trust, and earn income.
Open air markets are on a human scale. It's enjoyable to conduct business face-to-face, purchasing from owner/operators who have direct ties and personal commitments to the products they sell. The atmosphere tends to be more spontaneous than other retail environments. There is the potential for the element of pleasant surprise. They are, in general, safe places because of the mutual surveillance from high customer traffic and the vested interests that vendors have to make them safe.
Because open air markets help small farmers, require little infrastructure, and recycle goods and materials, they promote sustainable development. This contributes to making the world a safer and saner place. Open air markets are an alternative form of retailing in the industrialized world but are the main source of retailing in the less developed areas. It is an arena where the industrialized countries can learn much from the less developed world.
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