Blog 3 Reflections to date

Reflections to date

Goals of the Project

Bring information to both market vendors/customers and developers about:

·       who uses the market and how it supports the neighborhood;

·       what plans are being finalized for renovating/replacing the market;

·       how those changes will impact the market vendors/customers.

In particular, we want to amplify the voices of the market customers so that they can be heard in developing and executing plans for the market.

Relation of zine/podcast/event:

My suggestion is to see them as building on one another rather than in conversation.   The zine would provide information for market vendors/customers about the history of the market, how it is has changed over time and what context and debates are influencing decisions about how to move forward.  That information would hopefully focus interviews for the podcast so that it would reflect voices of the market on specific issues related to the design activity.   This would lead to questions such as:

·       What do you know about the renovation project?

·       Do you think it is a good plan?

·       What changes would you like to see in the market?

·       What about the market is it important to keep?

Finally, the event would be a place to bring together people interviewed with developers or other decision makers.  Playing the podcast would, hopefully, be the starting point for some conversation.

Other thoughts.

Things I have read so far and listened to have made me think about two other more general, background topics.   These are incomplete thoughts as of now. 

1.      1.  What is Baltimore’s responsibility for food?

For most of human history, a primary concern of urban government was assuring adequate food supplies for their cities.  Large cities require a lot of food and if it was not available, people often rioted.   There are records of food riots in Rome two thousand years ago and in France before the Revolution.   India experienced famines until the mid-twentieth century.   Most large cities in Western Europe and the US had systems of public markets to facilitate the distribution of fresh food and rules to assure food safety and protection against price-gouging. 

In the mid-nineteenth century, as food supplies became more stable, food became a market commodity, distributed by middle-men and sold in stores and later supermarkets.   The US has almost completely ceded responsibility for food to the economic market with the result that agriculture is largely in the hands of large commercial entities who focus on efficiency and profits at the expense of most qualitative values.   The distribution system has created food deserts, including 25 percent of the people in Baltimore who do not have ready access to fresh, nutritious food.    

In Baltimore, this meant that the city stopped building new markets as the city expanded and a long public debate began about the role of the public markets, particularly the economics of maintaining them.  I haven’t been in the other markets for a long time, but if Lexington Market is a sample, the public markets do not offer the full range of food needed, particularly produce.  

Maryland and Baltimore policy-makers have begun trying to rebalance the food distribution chain so that residents have better access.   State support for farmers markets has dramatically increased the number of farmers markets in the city during the growing season.  The Sunday market downtown, in some ways, looks more like pictures of the original public markets.  Baltimore passed legislation creating tax incentives for supermarkets to build stores in the city and a number of new stores have opened in recent years.  What the city has not done is rethink the role of public markets as part of ensuring distribution.  Instead it is thinking about Lexington Market as a way to attract and retain more affluent residents. 

2.    2.  What is community?

In Dr. King’s comments on an earlier blog she said that we need to unpack the idea of community which is not always warm and fuzzy, but can be cold and exclusionary.   She also said “there is no one community at LM”.   She was responding to my view that the community interests of the market community and/or the westside downtown community might be in conflict with interests of the city of Baltimore.

I think of community as existing on two levels – geographic and interest-based.   Even geographically, we each belong to several communities.  I have my immediate neighborhood (Hadley Square), Baltimore, Maryland, and the US.   I could also say, but don’t really identify with, some other units like a councilmanic district or a US House district.  For me, I include the Lexington Market not as a neighborhood thing but as a Baltimore thing.   Interest-based communities for me include things like people I used to work with, single-payer health advocates, UMBC students.  

Ideally, the goals and desires all of these communities would align, but that has rarely been my experience.   Certainly at the level of the city, there are tensions all the time among communities, rooted in competition for resources.   At best, political processes create a way for this competition to be resolved in a non-violent way.   We each have an idea of what is a fair way to do this, and maybe there is an actual goals statement for the city, although I have never seen it.   To some extent this was an underlying issue in the last election – the question of “every man for himself” against “we’re all in this together.”   

However, in terms of the Lexington Market, the city has an interest in having a central area with less crime and more affluent residents and businesses because there will be more revenue and (at least in theory) better services and programs by the city.  It also has an interest, less often stated, of having a central city area which is a public space used by all residents of the city.  One view of a successful city is one where the downtown is used by everyone and is an important part of creating a sense of community at the level of the city rather than individual neighborhoods.  But in trying to create changes which might benefit the whole city, the city creates change for the community.  This theme was discussed in the Art and Diversity podcast in terms of the disruption and possible displacement of businesses and residents already in an area.   Certainly the westside development process described in Dr. King’s chapter in the new book is an example of a terrible process which ended by disrupting the community and driving small businesses away without achieving positive change. 

Part of what this class is making me think about is how, or even is it possible, to balance the needs of multiple communities as they intersect.