Supplying Barcelona: The Role of Public Market Halls in the Construction of the Urban Food System. (September 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fuertes, Pere; Gomez-Escoda, Eulalia M.
• Other Names: Sand Jordan guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of urban history. Volume 48:Number 5(2022)
• Page Start: 1121
• Page End: 1139
• Publication Date: 2022-09
• Subjects: Barcelona -- food system -- market hall -- retail -- urban regeneration; Cities and towns -- History -- Periodicals; 909.09732
• DOI: 10.1177/0096144220971821
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0096-1442

Abstract

The origin of Barcelona's food system can be determined at the time when open-air markets were moved to covered spaces. Since then, market halls have adapted to many different scenarios: they have been the built form of public support for food sanitary control, a guarantee of quality and variety of edibles or a tool for the regeneration of urban fabrics. While in the second half of the twentieth-century comparable market systems in other European cities began to decline, half of the thirty-eight active markets at the end of the 2010s were built out of time in the city as a result of a public policy that accompanied urban expansion through the consolidation of small neighborhood centers. With the development of the so-called "Barcelona model" of regeneration of public space in the 1990s, markets became key pieces for urban transformation through food supply systems, a strategy still in force today.