6. THE INSTITUTION OF THE FARMERS’ MARKET
The farmers’ market is both the institution and place where the actions of the farmers, administrators, and customers come together. It is a robust urban place accommodating a public ritual. It is robust because of its ability to adapt to customer demands, crop availability, and available market spaces, but still be the same institution. It is a spatial center in that it is a recognizable landmark with which people identify surrounding spaces. It is also a temporal center in a city or town in that it is a recognizable event that draws a critical mass of people to support other events and activities. The farmers’ market is also a participatory landscape created and sustained by the actions of farmers, administrators, and customers. These qualities are represented in the urban design of the farmers’ market that creates a sense of place and time.
I will first define urban design and address the concepts of space and place of the farmers’ market:
The scale and scope of urban design is described as in between Architecture and urban planning. There is however, no agreed upon standard. Urban design is described by David Gosling as an integral part of the planning process. He uses the quarter or half mile square to designate the scale representing urban design. It is described as a smaller scale than planners use and larger than a building or a single building complex that an architect would work with. He maintains that the objects of architecture and the space they define meet the activities and coordination of planning at the level of urban design (Gosling, 1984).
The scale and scope of urban design is described as in between Architecture and urban planning. While there is no agreed upon standard, David Gosling maintains that the objects of architecture and the space they define meet the activities and coordination of planning at the level of urban design, an integral part of the planning process. The scale is described as a smaller than planners use and larger than a building or a single building complex that an architect would work with. His scale used is “the quarter” or half mile square (Gosling, 1984).
Richard Sennett defines public space, an inherent human social element, as the stage where public rituals are performed. In The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities, he critiques the boundary between indoors and out. He says that the protestant work ethic in the USA has created a militarism of daily life, and reduction and trivialization of urban design is no accident. This militarism has set up walls, separating inside and out. He sees the city as a stage where public rituals are performed. As these rituals disappear, so goes the value of that public space (Sennett, 1990).
Alexander tries to develop a vocabulary of physical elements that could be used in urban design that is friendly to the user from his/her cultural perspective. The farmers’ market is one vocabulary of public spaces with continuing public rituals. Moreover it offers a space with blurred lines between inside and out. The ritual of food shopping is taken out doors, yet farmers use defined spaces such as tents, stalls or buildings confined to the market boundaries.
Many farmers markets are exactly a one block length of street, often closed to automobile traffic during the time of operation. The Original Farmers’ Market of Indianapolis is one example of this. Farmers’ markets also provide a connection of city to countryside through the farmers who bring their products to sell to urban dwellers.
Noting it is not the size that matters; Jon Lang says that “urban design space” is often a street-bound block. He says, what is important, is the orchestration of change facilitated by public forces upon the boundaries of physical space and the activities that are afforded within (Lang, 1994). The public forces discussed in this paper are the farmers, the farmers’ market administrators, and the customers. The change is the aspect of these three actors creating and influencing the farmers’ market in its built and social form.
From these writings I use the term “urban design” to designate place and activity created by public forces that remain in the scale between that of architecture and that of planning. The farmers’ markets in this study are created by the public forces of farmers, customers, and farmers’ market administrators. The scale is often larger than architecture (with the exception of small farmers’ markets confined indoors). The scale is smaller than that of planning.
The criteria for good urban design are also evaluated in many ways by scholars such as Kevin Lynch, Christopher Alexander, and Jon Lang. To create and evaluate my own criteria I first looked at these. In Good City Form, Kevin Lynch provides a set of nine criteria what he calls performance dimensions. In summary, performance dimensions should refer to the spatial form of the city, be general, connect to the goals of any culture, and address all the features of settlement form that are relevant. Various cultural groups should be able to pick their own optimum thresholds for these values. This is so that the dimensions can be used where values differ or are evolving. Locations along these dimensions should be identifiable and measurable. They should be at the same level of generality, independent of each other if possible.
Dimensions should deal with present conditions which may drift over time (Lynch, 1981, p. 118).
Alexander’s criteria, or rules he admits are incomplete but necessary in some form to embody his overall rule correctly in the city. His overriding rule is that every increment of construction must be made in such a way as to heal the city (Alexander, 1987).
Lang follows Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to determine the needs that a certain design affords. He focuses on the public realm and adopts a politically informed approach examining the affordances of the built environment. He also asks how easy is it for a person to adapt to a situation within the built environment? He puts function first (before form), as the environment should function to fulfill human needs and be judged by such criteria and not by aesthetics (Lang, 1994).
In my evaluation of these five farmers’ markets, I have developed my tools of evaluation based upon the writings of experts in the field and my observations of criteria. The farmers’ markets have shown remarkable robustness. They have endured many changes, only to remain the same institution. I’ve chosen to examine participatory landscapes and the formation of centers because they help to facilitate the creation of a temporal and spatial sense of place in the farmers’ market.
The Robust Farmers’ Market
Each institution of the farmers’ market adapts with respect to the variables of, customer demands, crop availability, and available market spaces. Lang writes “the overall goal of urban design is to design robust places…that endure under change.” (Lang, 1994, p. 180). It is the efficiency and adaptability of the physical city as well as that of its people who are called into question when its survival is at stake (Lang,1994). In this section I will investigate how the farmers’ market adapts to the above variables.
Farmers’ market customers enjoy buying farmers’ market products and accept these products that are restricted to the growing season. At the same time, many directly influence what the farmer brings to this event by making requests. Of the farmers’ markets examined in this paper, all are restricted to products grown in Indiana, to Indiana’s growing season and to what can be grown indoors. Due to customer requests, farmers are willing to experiment with new crops and marketing practices for the satisfaction of the former. Another aspect is customers calling ahead to have a product held until a customer gets there. Four of the interviewed customers from different farmers’ markets and from different farmers have had products held for them. Several customer interviews also show that farmers have grown or altered products for their request.
It is driven by what and when the farmers are able to produce. New cycles of growing, selling and customer feedback of this public ritual bring new products. As the customers become better informed of what farmers can grow, farmers are able to increase the diversity of their products. This ever changing institution is always, however, simply the farmers’ market.
Farmers’ Markets adapt to sizes, locations, and qualities of the available physical space. As Gratz and Mintz point out, farmers’ markets can inhabit almost any space. Farmers need a place to drive in and set up their tents and stands. As long as potential foot traffic exists any area will make a satisfactory spot for farmers to sell their harvest (Gratz and Mintz, 1998, p. 220). Farmers’ market spaces can include farmers’ market shops, extended season and/or foul weather shelters, parking lots that are not at the time in use, parks, streets closed to automobiles, vacant lots.
Centers of space and time
Farmers’ markets are centers or nodes of activity. The prominence of these centers gives new and lasting meaning to places. They are spatial and temporal centers that take new forms yet remain an ancient form of commerce. Their space becomes more identifiable the more they grow. Weekly, seasonal, and yearly cycles bring evolution.
Christopher Alexander emphasizes the importance of the formation of geographic centers. He writes of the slow emergence of centers that arise spontaneously and become landmarks in the cityscape (Alexander, 1987, pp. 92-95). Farmers’ markets often start small but become important landscapes for the city.
Lynch describes urban centers as “peaks of activity and interest which dominate the urban scene because of their symbolic importance and the frequency in which they are occupied and seen. [They] are the meeting ground of the diverse metropolis, and they give character to large areas around themselves” (Lynch, 1990, p.91). Farmers’ markets draw a mix of people from local to tourist and from young to old. They are weekly symbols of physical and social community nourishment.
Yi Fu Tuan writes that “center” is not a designated point on the earth, but “a concept in mythic thought rather than a deeply felt value bound to unique events and values” (Tuan, 1977, p. 150). The Original Farmers’ Market at the City Market in Downtown Indianapolis, which I will discuss in detail later, has become and remained a center of both time and space. Its mythic quality has carried it through physical destruction and periods of inactivity. Though the downtown farmers’ market has been at different sites over the last century, its myth has persisted. It now sits as a solid center of space and time at its original location, by the City Market Building.
Temporally, younger farmers’ markets slowly move toward such prominence. Public ritual, which is the observable behavior in public space and discussed below, helps to build the symbolic importance of newer farmers markets.
Farmers’ markets take up an identifiable time of the week. Many customers plan events or errands around their farmers’ market trips. The farmers’ market becomes a temporal center or node that customers plan activities around. Only thirty-two percent of the customers interviewed said they travel directly from home and back to home. During the week, farmers’ markets coincide also with lunch hours and, for many, the drive home.
Public Ritual
An examination of the urban design of the farmers market reveals a space where public ritual is performed. Customers come to the farmers market for its commercial significance as well as for its weekly social aspect.
This space also provides informal education as customers are drawn to participate in its event. Families combine shopping and family time as children have a chance to participate in designated activities as well as informal attractions set up by individual farmers. Tourists are drawn to this event to see the local people buying local products. For some this is also a part of a weekly health or exercise practice.
I think Lang would agree that the farmers’ market meets affiliation needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for many customers. Its a place where one can talk to the same friendly farmers and see the same faces as most weeks. It may be the closest thing to a community meeting that a local people attend.
The farmers’ market is most obviously known for its formal functions. As a place of commerce, it provides employment and often exists as an attraction for customers into a commercial area. “In its own way, in its own form each market creates a tourist attraction while serving the local community and encouraging local business” (Gratz and Mintz, p. 211, 1998).
Traders Point Green Market, which takes place Friday nights during the summer months, is an attraction for tourists who seek local foods in a rural setting that is not too far from the city. Local meats, produce, and meals made form the products of local farmers can be bought here. It is a place where can people watch the regular customers or become a participant in this weekly ritual.
Participatory Landscapes
People come to the farmers’ market to participate in shopping, socializing, eating, relaxing, exercise and food related education. Tourism and grocery are the formal activities of the farmers’ market. The landscape of the farmers’ market is inherently educational as direct communication with the farmer provides an opportunity to find out how food is grown, about the environmental affects of agricultural practices and about how the animals raised for food are treated. It is a social place and time that affords relaxation and time to spend with friends and family.
In writing about the educational environments that can be created in urban design, Lang asserts that informal learning occurs “as the byproduct of the interactions with the people and places of everyday life…” and names participatory landscapes as the best type of environment to meet the cognitive needs. The farmers’ market is one participatory environment that affords learning (Lang, 1994, p. 306).
Customers get to know the farmers in person, and may receive information about farm visits creating a more intimate connection between producer and consumer. Customers also have the opportunity to learn sensually as they touch different products and taste them.
Tuan states that “learning is rarely at the level of explicit and formal instruction...nearly all learning is at the subconscious level.” In Space and Place, he draws attention to the humanist question of how to increase the burden of awareness within space and place (Tuan, p. 201-203).
As a tourist attraction, people from out of town may frequent the farmers markets to get a sense of what the town is like, giving them the opportunity to meet people from the city as well as meeting the local farmers. During my field work one customer of the Original Farmers’ Market was checking out the place because he had just been excused from jury duty and had some extra time. Two other customers refused to be interviewed on the grounds that they were not from the area. Two other customers spoke about how the people that shop at certain markets seem to be good representation of the surrounding community.
Steve Spencer, a farmer from Sheridan, IN who sells shitake mushrooms at Broad Ripple, Traders Point, and the Original Farmers’ Market in Indianapolis, notes that people are part of the entertainment. For farmers and customers, each customer adds to the entertainment value of the event. Other farmers note altruistic notions of creating a better world through healthier food and a stronger connection to the farm and ecology of the farm.
Not only do customers restock their kitchen pantries from the farmers’ market, but they are also able to restock their “social pantry”: by engaging with other customers and farmers the customer is able to interact and network with others, an aspect of life that has mostly disappeared in today’s modern marketplaces.
At Traders Point, customers enjoy supper with family and friends during the summer season and Saturday morning breakfast during the winter. Other farmers’ markets have fresh baked goods sold by vendors. People can be seen enjoying these foods as well as produce bought from farmers.
Family time is another ritual that is fulfilled through the farmers market. The tasks of shopping are combined with the farmers’ market’s relaxing atmosphere. Some markets specifically provide activities for children, providing the opportunity for learning and fun. Farmers sometimes bring animals for children to hold or pet. Here the children develop a connection to the farmers’ market as well as where their food is coming from.
Exercise is another social activity that compliments many customers’ farmers’ market visits. Thirty percent of the customers interviewed walked to the farmers’ market. Eleven percent ride a bike to get there. For those who drive, there are many opportunities for exercise. The crowded Monon Trail in Broad Ripple is a popular path for walkers and is adjacent to the farmers’ market. Traders’ Point Green Market is located on a dairy farm that has large open fields where families can be found exploring and children found playing. Minnetrista has extensive gardens throughout its forty acre campus and is a stop along the White River Greenway. The Original Farmers’ Market provides an opportunity for downtown workers to walk to lunch. Half of the customers interviewed at Natural Heritage walked to get there.
Sense of Place
Sense of place in the farmers’ market grows stronger as the formation of spatial centers becomes more coherent through public ritual. Of sense, the engagement of all of the senses sends customers home with a strong memory of the event. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures fill the farmers’ market with continuous celebration of the seasons. The repeating cycles of the farmers’ market provide a sense of temporal permanence to this institution. The formation of spatial centers solidifies a sense of permanent geographical location for these participatory landscapes.
Innovative planners, developers and architects who break convention of a national proportion can create catalyst that can encompass local opinions, myths, and rules that make a place not only unique, but create an attraction stronger enduring than that of the high-profile mega-project. These mega-projects are argued to create no-places while local innovations can create that sense of place needed to revitalize a community (Gratz, 1998, p.2-3).
About the sensuous production of place that comes about through music, Sara Cohen writes of the stimuli and product of senses other than sight and touch, namely hearing, that produce lasting effects on place (Dear and Flusty, p. 262). Like the cultural and musical events she writes of, the farmers market creates a multi-media experience that engages every sense. Tastings of food are given freely by farmers. Flowers and herbs scent many of the farmers’ booths. The visual display of each booth tells its own unique story. Sounds of musicians playing local tunes, children playing, and farmers describing their prized veggies permeate the air. Sheep and baby chicks are brought in for children to pet. Vegetables and fruits are inspected by touch, sight, and taste.
Hayden describes “place” as one of the trickiest words in the English language, carrying the resonance of homestead, location, and open space in the city and also position in social hierarchy. Place is also described by Hayden as a social and political production. It contains a social history which is embedded in urban landscapes (Hayden, p. 15-42).
Tuan says that “place” is security and “space” is freedom, noting that we are attached to one and long for the other. He says that space is more abstract than place. The aim of his book is to suggest more than conclude, drawing attention to questions that humanists have posed with regard to space and place. His concern is the design for the creation of a more human habitat. He tries to develop this material from the single perspective of experience (Tuan, p. v).
In Place and Placelessness, E. Relph writes that intentional or not, urban design is influenced by architects, and planners, but greatly by the people who use these spaces, whose influences over long periods of time create experiences of authenticity. He maintains that authentic places afford a sense of identity for people residing within (Relph, 1976).
The public ritual of the farmers’ market performed over a period of years has set precedence for the existence and continuation of farmers’ markets in a number of urban spaces. “Place can acquire deep meaning for the adult through the steady accretion of sentiment over the years” (Tuan, p.33) and that “the identity of place is achieved by dramatizing the aspirations, needs and functional rhythms of personal and group life” (Tuan, p. 178).
Story of place of the farmers’ market
As both a temporal and spatial center, The Original Farmers’ Market in Indianapolis has increased its mythic status since its beginnings as a part of the original plat of the city in 1821. By “mythic” I describe the temporal and spatial permanence that this institution has. The city market building has been destroyed twice by fire. The destruction of 1958 left the market in ruins until 1977 when the current building was completed with the help of the Lilly Endowment and its listing on the National Register of Historic Landmarks (http://www.indianapoliscitymarket.com, 2002). Now that it is on the National Register of Historic Landmarks its history and permanence is officially recognized.
Another farmers’ market existed downtown in the 1970’s. It was located on South Street less than a mile away. While that space was eventually replaced by an Ely Lilly building, the demand for a farmers’ market remained. In 1997 that demand was reunited with the historic market building, combining the ritual with the appropriate historic space.
This robust farmers’ market has stood the test of time. Now on the National Register of Historic Landmarks, it is sure to keep the connotation of food in whatever form the future holds. For now, this Indianapolis landmark is growing in its role as a farmers market and an attraction for tourists and those of the downtown lunch crowd.
I will first define urban design and address the concepts of space and place of the farmers’ market:
The scale and scope of urban design is described as in between Architecture and urban planning. There is however, no agreed upon standard. Urban design is described by David Gosling as an integral part of the planning process. He uses the quarter or half mile square to designate the scale representing urban design. It is described as a smaller scale than planners use and larger than a building or a single building complex that an architect would work with. He maintains that the objects of architecture and the space they define meet the activities and coordination of planning at the level of urban design (Gosling, 1984).
The scale and scope of urban design is described as in between Architecture and urban planning. While there is no agreed upon standard, David Gosling maintains that the objects of architecture and the space they define meet the activities and coordination of planning at the level of urban design, an integral part of the planning process. The scale is described as a smaller than planners use and larger than a building or a single building complex that an architect would work with. His scale used is “the quarter” or half mile square (Gosling, 1984).
Richard Sennett defines public space, an inherent human social element, as the stage where public rituals are performed. In The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities, he critiques the boundary between indoors and out. He says that the protestant work ethic in the USA has created a militarism of daily life, and reduction and trivialization of urban design is no accident. This militarism has set up walls, separating inside and out. He sees the city as a stage where public rituals are performed. As these rituals disappear, so goes the value of that public space (Sennett, 1990).
Alexander tries to develop a vocabulary of physical elements that could be used in urban design that is friendly to the user from his/her cultural perspective. The farmers’ market is one vocabulary of public spaces with continuing public rituals. Moreover it offers a space with blurred lines between inside and out. The ritual of food shopping is taken out doors, yet farmers use defined spaces such as tents, stalls or buildings confined to the market boundaries.
Many farmers markets are exactly a one block length of street, often closed to automobile traffic during the time of operation. The Original Farmers’ Market of Indianapolis is one example of this. Farmers’ markets also provide a connection of city to countryside through the farmers who bring their products to sell to urban dwellers.
Noting it is not the size that matters; Jon Lang says that “urban design space” is often a street-bound block. He says, what is important, is the orchestration of change facilitated by public forces upon the boundaries of physical space and the activities that are afforded within (Lang, 1994). The public forces discussed in this paper are the farmers, the farmers’ market administrators, and the customers. The change is the aspect of these three actors creating and influencing the farmers’ market in its built and social form.
From these writings I use the term “urban design” to designate place and activity created by public forces that remain in the scale between that of architecture and that of planning. The farmers’ markets in this study are created by the public forces of farmers, customers, and farmers’ market administrators. The scale is often larger than architecture (with the exception of small farmers’ markets confined indoors). The scale is smaller than that of planning.
The criteria for good urban design are also evaluated in many ways by scholars such as Kevin Lynch, Christopher Alexander, and Jon Lang. To create and evaluate my own criteria I first looked at these. In Good City Form, Kevin Lynch provides a set of nine criteria what he calls performance dimensions. In summary, performance dimensions should refer to the spatial form of the city, be general, connect to the goals of any culture, and address all the features of settlement form that are relevant. Various cultural groups should be able to pick their own optimum thresholds for these values. This is so that the dimensions can be used where values differ or are evolving. Locations along these dimensions should be identifiable and measurable. They should be at the same level of generality, independent of each other if possible.
Dimensions should deal with present conditions which may drift over time (Lynch, 1981, p. 118).
Alexander’s criteria, or rules he admits are incomplete but necessary in some form to embody his overall rule correctly in the city. His overriding rule is that every increment of construction must be made in such a way as to heal the city (Alexander, 1987).
Lang follows Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to determine the needs that a certain design affords. He focuses on the public realm and adopts a politically informed approach examining the affordances of the built environment. He also asks how easy is it for a person to adapt to a situation within the built environment? He puts function first (before form), as the environment should function to fulfill human needs and be judged by such criteria and not by aesthetics (Lang, 1994).
In my evaluation of these five farmers’ markets, I have developed my tools of evaluation based upon the writings of experts in the field and my observations of criteria. The farmers’ markets have shown remarkable robustness. They have endured many changes, only to remain the same institution. I’ve chosen to examine participatory landscapes and the formation of centers because they help to facilitate the creation of a temporal and spatial sense of place in the farmers’ market.
The Robust Farmers’ Market
Each institution of the farmers’ market adapts with respect to the variables of, customer demands, crop availability, and available market spaces. Lang writes “the overall goal of urban design is to design robust places…that endure under change.” (Lang, 1994, p. 180). It is the efficiency and adaptability of the physical city as well as that of its people who are called into question when its survival is at stake (Lang,1994). In this section I will investigate how the farmers’ market adapts to the above variables.
Farmers’ market customers enjoy buying farmers’ market products and accept these products that are restricted to the growing season. At the same time, many directly influence what the farmer brings to this event by making requests. Of the farmers’ markets examined in this paper, all are restricted to products grown in Indiana, to Indiana’s growing season and to what can be grown indoors. Due to customer requests, farmers are willing to experiment with new crops and marketing practices for the satisfaction of the former. Another aspect is customers calling ahead to have a product held until a customer gets there. Four of the interviewed customers from different farmers’ markets and from different farmers have had products held for them. Several customer interviews also show that farmers have grown or altered products for their request.
It is driven by what and when the farmers are able to produce. New cycles of growing, selling and customer feedback of this public ritual bring new products. As the customers become better informed of what farmers can grow, farmers are able to increase the diversity of their products. This ever changing institution is always, however, simply the farmers’ market.
Farmers’ Markets adapt to sizes, locations, and qualities of the available physical space. As Gratz and Mintz point out, farmers’ markets can inhabit almost any space. Farmers need a place to drive in and set up their tents and stands. As long as potential foot traffic exists any area will make a satisfactory spot for farmers to sell their harvest (Gratz and Mintz, 1998, p. 220). Farmers’ market spaces can include farmers’ market shops, extended season and/or foul weather shelters, parking lots that are not at the time in use, parks, streets closed to automobiles, vacant lots.
Centers of space and time
Farmers’ markets are centers or nodes of activity. The prominence of these centers gives new and lasting meaning to places. They are spatial and temporal centers that take new forms yet remain an ancient form of commerce. Their space becomes more identifiable the more they grow. Weekly, seasonal, and yearly cycles bring evolution.
Christopher Alexander emphasizes the importance of the formation of geographic centers. He writes of the slow emergence of centers that arise spontaneously and become landmarks in the cityscape (Alexander, 1987, pp. 92-95). Farmers’ markets often start small but become important landscapes for the city.
Lynch describes urban centers as “peaks of activity and interest which dominate the urban scene because of their symbolic importance and the frequency in which they are occupied and seen. [They] are the meeting ground of the diverse metropolis, and they give character to large areas around themselves” (Lynch, 1990, p.91). Farmers’ markets draw a mix of people from local to tourist and from young to old. They are weekly symbols of physical and social community nourishment.
Yi Fu Tuan writes that “center” is not a designated point on the earth, but “a concept in mythic thought rather than a deeply felt value bound to unique events and values” (Tuan, 1977, p. 150). The Original Farmers’ Market at the City Market in Downtown Indianapolis, which I will discuss in detail later, has become and remained a center of both time and space. Its mythic quality has carried it through physical destruction and periods of inactivity. Though the downtown farmers’ market has been at different sites over the last century, its myth has persisted. It now sits as a solid center of space and time at its original location, by the City Market Building.
Temporally, younger farmers’ markets slowly move toward such prominence. Public ritual, which is the observable behavior in public space and discussed below, helps to build the symbolic importance of newer farmers markets.
Farmers’ markets take up an identifiable time of the week. Many customers plan events or errands around their farmers’ market trips. The farmers’ market becomes a temporal center or node that customers plan activities around. Only thirty-two percent of the customers interviewed said they travel directly from home and back to home. During the week, farmers’ markets coincide also with lunch hours and, for many, the drive home.
Public Ritual
An examination of the urban design of the farmers market reveals a space where public ritual is performed. Customers come to the farmers market for its commercial significance as well as for its weekly social aspect.
This space also provides informal education as customers are drawn to participate in its event. Families combine shopping and family time as children have a chance to participate in designated activities as well as informal attractions set up by individual farmers. Tourists are drawn to this event to see the local people buying local products. For some this is also a part of a weekly health or exercise practice.
I think Lang would agree that the farmers’ market meets affiliation needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for many customers. Its a place where one can talk to the same friendly farmers and see the same faces as most weeks. It may be the closest thing to a community meeting that a local people attend.
The farmers’ market is most obviously known for its formal functions. As a place of commerce, it provides employment and often exists as an attraction for customers into a commercial area. “In its own way, in its own form each market creates a tourist attraction while serving the local community and encouraging local business” (Gratz and Mintz, p. 211, 1998).
Traders Point Green Market, which takes place Friday nights during the summer months, is an attraction for tourists who seek local foods in a rural setting that is not too far from the city. Local meats, produce, and meals made form the products of local farmers can be bought here. It is a place where can people watch the regular customers or become a participant in this weekly ritual.
Participatory Landscapes
People come to the farmers’ market to participate in shopping, socializing, eating, relaxing, exercise and food related education. Tourism and grocery are the formal activities of the farmers’ market. The landscape of the farmers’ market is inherently educational as direct communication with the farmer provides an opportunity to find out how food is grown, about the environmental affects of agricultural practices and about how the animals raised for food are treated. It is a social place and time that affords relaxation and time to spend with friends and family.
In writing about the educational environments that can be created in urban design, Lang asserts that informal learning occurs “as the byproduct of the interactions with the people and places of everyday life…” and names participatory landscapes as the best type of environment to meet the cognitive needs. The farmers’ market is one participatory environment that affords learning (Lang, 1994, p. 306).
Customers get to know the farmers in person, and may receive information about farm visits creating a more intimate connection between producer and consumer. Customers also have the opportunity to learn sensually as they touch different products and taste them.
Tuan states that “learning is rarely at the level of explicit and formal instruction...nearly all learning is at the subconscious level.” In Space and Place, he draws attention to the humanist question of how to increase the burden of awareness within space and place (Tuan, p. 201-203).
As a tourist attraction, people from out of town may frequent the farmers markets to get a sense of what the town is like, giving them the opportunity to meet people from the city as well as meeting the local farmers. During my field work one customer of the Original Farmers’ Market was checking out the place because he had just been excused from jury duty and had some extra time. Two other customers refused to be interviewed on the grounds that they were not from the area. Two other customers spoke about how the people that shop at certain markets seem to be good representation of the surrounding community.
Steve Spencer, a farmer from Sheridan, IN who sells shitake mushrooms at Broad Ripple, Traders Point, and the Original Farmers’ Market in Indianapolis, notes that people are part of the entertainment. For farmers and customers, each customer adds to the entertainment value of the event. Other farmers note altruistic notions of creating a better world through healthier food and a stronger connection to the farm and ecology of the farm.
Not only do customers restock their kitchen pantries from the farmers’ market, but they are also able to restock their “social pantry”: by engaging with other customers and farmers the customer is able to interact and network with others, an aspect of life that has mostly disappeared in today’s modern marketplaces.
At Traders Point, customers enjoy supper with family and friends during the summer season and Saturday morning breakfast during the winter. Other farmers’ markets have fresh baked goods sold by vendors. People can be seen enjoying these foods as well as produce bought from farmers.
Family time is another ritual that is fulfilled through the farmers market. The tasks of shopping are combined with the farmers’ market’s relaxing atmosphere. Some markets specifically provide activities for children, providing the opportunity for learning and fun. Farmers sometimes bring animals for children to hold or pet. Here the children develop a connection to the farmers’ market as well as where their food is coming from.
Exercise is another social activity that compliments many customers’ farmers’ market visits. Thirty percent of the customers interviewed walked to the farmers’ market. Eleven percent ride a bike to get there. For those who drive, there are many opportunities for exercise. The crowded Monon Trail in Broad Ripple is a popular path for walkers and is adjacent to the farmers’ market. Traders’ Point Green Market is located on a dairy farm that has large open fields where families can be found exploring and children found playing. Minnetrista has extensive gardens throughout its forty acre campus and is a stop along the White River Greenway. The Original Farmers’ Market provides an opportunity for downtown workers to walk to lunch. Half of the customers interviewed at Natural Heritage walked to get there.
Sense of Place
Sense of place in the farmers’ market grows stronger as the formation of spatial centers becomes more coherent through public ritual. Of sense, the engagement of all of the senses sends customers home with a strong memory of the event. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures fill the farmers’ market with continuous celebration of the seasons. The repeating cycles of the farmers’ market provide a sense of temporal permanence to this institution. The formation of spatial centers solidifies a sense of permanent geographical location for these participatory landscapes.
Innovative planners, developers and architects who break convention of a national proportion can create catalyst that can encompass local opinions, myths, and rules that make a place not only unique, but create an attraction stronger enduring than that of the high-profile mega-project. These mega-projects are argued to create no-places while local innovations can create that sense of place needed to revitalize a community (Gratz, 1998, p.2-3).
About the sensuous production of place that comes about through music, Sara Cohen writes of the stimuli and product of senses other than sight and touch, namely hearing, that produce lasting effects on place (Dear and Flusty, p. 262). Like the cultural and musical events she writes of, the farmers market creates a multi-media experience that engages every sense. Tastings of food are given freely by farmers. Flowers and herbs scent many of the farmers’ booths. The visual display of each booth tells its own unique story. Sounds of musicians playing local tunes, children playing, and farmers describing their prized veggies permeate the air. Sheep and baby chicks are brought in for children to pet. Vegetables and fruits are inspected by touch, sight, and taste.
Hayden describes “place” as one of the trickiest words in the English language, carrying the resonance of homestead, location, and open space in the city and also position in social hierarchy. Place is also described by Hayden as a social and political production. It contains a social history which is embedded in urban landscapes (Hayden, p. 15-42).
Tuan says that “place” is security and “space” is freedom, noting that we are attached to one and long for the other. He says that space is more abstract than place. The aim of his book is to suggest more than conclude, drawing attention to questions that humanists have posed with regard to space and place. His concern is the design for the creation of a more human habitat. He tries to develop this material from the single perspective of experience (Tuan, p. v).
In Place and Placelessness, E. Relph writes that intentional or not, urban design is influenced by architects, and planners, but greatly by the people who use these spaces, whose influences over long periods of time create experiences of authenticity. He maintains that authentic places afford a sense of identity for people residing within (Relph, 1976).
The public ritual of the farmers’ market performed over a period of years has set precedence for the existence and continuation of farmers’ markets in a number of urban spaces. “Place can acquire deep meaning for the adult through the steady accretion of sentiment over the years” (Tuan, p.33) and that “the identity of place is achieved by dramatizing the aspirations, needs and functional rhythms of personal and group life” (Tuan, p. 178).
Story of place of the farmers’ market
As both a temporal and spatial center, The Original Farmers’ Market in Indianapolis has increased its mythic status since its beginnings as a part of the original plat of the city in 1821. By “mythic” I describe the temporal and spatial permanence that this institution has. The city market building has been destroyed twice by fire. The destruction of 1958 left the market in ruins until 1977 when the current building was completed with the help of the Lilly Endowment and its listing on the National Register of Historic Landmarks (http://www.indianapoliscitymarket.com, 2002). Now that it is on the National Register of Historic Landmarks its history and permanence is officially recognized.
Another farmers’ market existed downtown in the 1970’s. It was located on South Street less than a mile away. While that space was eventually replaced by an Ely Lilly building, the demand for a farmers’ market remained. In 1997 that demand was reunited with the historic market building, combining the ritual with the appropriate historic space.
This robust farmers’ market has stood the test of time. Now on the National Register of Historic Landmarks, it is sure to keep the connotation of food in whatever form the future holds. For now, this Indianapolis landmark is growing in its role as a farmers market and an attraction for tourists and those of the downtown lunch crowd.
posted by Anthony Noble at 8:08 PM
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