The Social Concept of Integration
IN A FOOD HALL SETTING
Munch defined “social integration” as the scope and depth of the connection among members of a particular social unit [13]. One of the essential goals of social integration is the increased participation or inclusion of minority or under-represented members in a community, e.g., women, children, other ethnic and or immigrant groups, the elderly, and lower-income residents [9, 11, 15].
Research on public markets provided proof of a market’s capacity to encourage social integration within a community [9, 11, 15, 17].
Integration via a Successful Public Space
In a focused study on the ability of public markets to serve as a vehicle for social integration, the Project for Public Spaces identified the importance of a market in serving as a successful public space. For a market to successfully contribute to social integration, people in a community must identify with the public market as a gathering space, as a place where they hang out and meet other people [15]. The authors linked social integration to the market having a “sense of place,” such that people associate it with vibrancy, with a sense of pride, and a meaning to most of the residents in a particular community[7, 15, 19]. This feeling of a “sense of place” was applicable not only to the shoppers but also the vendors, who use it as a basis for choosing to stay in a particular market [15].
Integration via Opportunities for Upward Mobility for Minority Groups
In the same study, the authors added that markets also provide “upward mobility,” by serving as a vehicle for vendors to start and succeed with small businesses. Historically, vendors in public markets come from the minority members of the community, usually from ethnic or immigrant populations [9, 11, 15]. Markets were started and became successful as a result of a dominant ethnic or immigrant group vendors, who decided to come together to provide fresh produce, crafts, and food which are traditional in their native country [10, 12].
“From serving the original objective of raising public hygiene standards, hawker centres began to perform a social role. Not only could people with few or no educational qualifications find employment in hawker stalls, those who work hard to earn a good livelihood even have the chance of elevating their social status. An example of such success is the hawker behind Ya Kun Kaya Toast, which started as a humble stall selling toast with coconut egg jam in the Telok Ayer Food Centre in the 1960s. Today it is a well-known chain of franchises.”
— Singapore’s Hawker Centres, Levelling the Playing Field with Food [18] Page 4
Food Halls as Successful Public Spaces
In trying to achieve the goal of social integration in a food hall setting, the same elements are relevant.
The first goal is for the food hall to serve as a successful public place, where all members of the community see themselves as welcome to hang out and meet other people.
“Findlay Market is Ohio’s oldest continuously operated public market and one of Cincinnati’s most cherished institutions. The Market is located just blocks from downtown in Over-the-Rhine, a dense historic neighborhood rich in 19th century architecture. Open Wednesday through Saturday, Findlay Market is home year-around to about two dozen indoor merchants selling meat, fish, poultry, produce, flowers, cheese, deli, and ethnic foods. On Saturdays from March to December the Market also hosts a thriving farmers market, dozens of outdoor vendors, numerous street performers, and lots of special events.
Findlay Market is a gathering place for people from all over the city. It routinely attracts perhaps the most socially, economically, racially, and ethnically diverse crowds found anywhere in Cincinnati. They come for the sights and sounds and smells of an old-fashioned public market, for the great variety of fabulous fresh foods, for bargains, for people watching, and for a quintessentially urban shopping experience.”
— Project for Public Spaces
Case Study: Findlay Market [14]
“Findlay Market is Ohio’s oldest and Cincinnati’s last remaining municipal market. It’s also a public gathering space that encourages community interaction across social and economic boundaries. The quality food and welcoming atmosphere create a regional attraction that draws regulars and visitors alike.
Over the 160 years of the market’s operations, generations of Cincinnatians have collective memories and shared experiences that cross age, racial, and socioeconomic boundaries. The community is heavily involved, and there are partnerships with museums, chambers of commerce, churches, artists, museums, and nonprofits…
Inclusivity is essential for the market, which is a third-party administrator for SNAP (SNAP Plus). This allows the market to process electronic benefit (EBT) transfers and provide tokens that can be used to buy fresh products at the farmers’ market and at Findlay Market Farm stands. In addition, the market runs a program called Produce Perks that matches EBT transactions, up to $10 daily, to be used for fresh produce.”
— American Planning Association (APA)
Great Places in America: Public Spaces (Findlay Market, Cincinnati, Ohio) [5]
Food Halls as Incubator Business Space
A food hall can also help integrate minority groups by providing an incubator business space for vendors. Potential vendors usually have a unique food idea but do not have the skills, the business connections, nor the needed funds to start a business.
Lower Capital Costs for Vendors
The first advantage of a food hall is that the capital costs for a food hall stall (whether food or non-food related) are much lower compared to a restaurant or even a food truck [1, 3, 6].
Temporary or Day Stalls
Second, food halls have an integrated physical layout where stalls are located beside each other inside a common structure. Food halls are therefore able to accommodate temporary or smaller stalls. These stalls benefit from exposure to the regular food hall visitors. They help test out new concepts, with lesser commitment in terms of capital, time, and rental costs [3, 20].
Business Support Services
Third, most community food halls now provide business incubation support services, which include common kitchens, access to financing and training, and support for marketing and promotion [1, 3].
Granville Market Day Vendor Program
Granville Market has a program called “Day Vendors.” [4] The objective of this program is to support smaller businesses who would like to sell at the Granville Public Market. Weekly, there are forty (40) temporary tables which are set up, around the market, for the Day Vendor program. The program is available to artists and artisan vendors who are residents of British Columbia. The program is meant to be affordable and easy to participate in, because of the following: (1) a large number of vendors are rotated among the limited number of tables and are only allotted a maximum of two weeks per month; (2) the cost is affordable at only Canadian $40 per day; (3) there is no capital outlay required from the vendor.
Granville Market, Vancouver
Craft vendor in a “day vendor stall”
Granville Market, Vancouver
Customer checking out a “day vendor stall” selling different kinds of olives
Reading Terminal Market Day Stall Merchants
The Reading Terminal Market has a similar program, called Day Stall Merchants [16]. It provides for ten temporary locations around the market and also provides some flexibility in terms of the number of days that the stall has to be open. This program encourages new merchants to test the market and manage their rental costs.
“When Amina Aliako started cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors part-time at Reading Terminal Market last year, the kaleidoscopic vendors there were her introduction to America. She practiced English with native Philly line cooks and Amish bakers. She ordered her first ever cheesesteak from Carmen’s — and then her second. She even found a fellow Syrian in Kamal Al Barouki, a longtime purveyor of Middle Eastern foods at the market.
’When I first started working here, I was a little bit worried because I wear a hijab,’ Aliako said in Arabic, her second language after Kurdish. ‘But in my two years, honestly, I haven’t had a single person harass me. I haven’t experienced any racism. I see such humanity in the managers and the workers. They make me feel welcome.’
Six months in, Anuj Gupta, the market’s general manager, offered Aliako a full-time job. Benefits, paid leave, the whole nine yards — it was a fast promotion for the 43-year-old newly settled refugee. But she turned it down: ‘I told him, ‘No, I want to sell here.’’
… in less than year, Amina’s Foods was born. Three days a week, the new vendor’s cart in the market sells a spread of Levantine classics, from creamy hummus and baba ghanoush to jars of colorful pickles and savory kibbeh. Her cleaner-to-vendor hustle has wowed the market leadership. ‘Amina’s is the story of America for its entire existence,’ Gupta said. ‘This is how our country has been built.’ Aliako’s story is a testament to Philadelphians who take being a ‘welcoming city’ status to heart.”
— How a Syrian refugee found the American dream at Reading Terminal Market[8]
El Mercado Food Hall
El Mercado at Norris Square, in Philadelphia is a case study of a much smaller food hall which has successfully integrated immigrants from Latin America by providing them opportunities to earn extra income [15]. The food hall is located in a 5,000 square foot renovated warehouse building, in a low-income neighborhood in North Philadelphia. The market started in 1997. They began with open-air food festivals offering imported food from the immigrants’ countries of origin. The vendors were chosen among the community’s residents. The food vendors in El Mercado are immigrants from various Latin American countries like El Salvador, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Many of them have regular jobs and use their stall in the market to earn additional income. The bakery is operated by a nonprofit group which provides jobs for residents who are undergoing a drug rehabilitation program. The food hall secured grants, such that the rents for the vendors are kept at manageable levels. Currently, there are three restaurants, a bakery, a juice bar, and a produce stand in El Mercado.
El Mercado Market, Norris Square, Philadelphia [2]
Stalls and vendors
The goal of social integration for a community food hall is a complex and long-term one. The programs provided above are only meant to be examples. Various initiatives at each stage of the food hall (from pre-planning, to operations, and future visioning) need to be implemented to ensure the widest reach and the deepest level of integration to happen.
Sources:
'Cultivating Development, Trends, and Opportunities at the Intersection of Food and Real Estate', (Washington, DC, USA, Urban Land Institute, 2016).
'El Mercado Market', in Holly Eats (2000) http://www.hollyeats.com/ElMercado.htm.
'Food Halls of North America', (Cushman & Wakefield, 2018) http://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/research-and-insight/2018/foodhalls-of-northamerica.
'Granville Island Public Market: Day Vendors', 2018) <https://granvilleisland.com/day-vendors>.
'Great Places in America, Public Spaces Category: Findlay Market, Cincinnati, Ohio', American Planning Association, (2016) <https://www.planning.org/greatplaces/spaces/2016/findlaymarket/>.
Edwin Heathcote, 'How Cities Can Harness the Power of the Market', in Financial Times (London, United Kingdom, The Financial Times Ltd., 2018).
How to Turn a Place Around: A Handbook for Creating Successful Public Spaces, (New York, NY, Project for Public Spaces, 2000).
Max Marin and Billy Penn, 'How a Syrian Refugee Found the American Dream at Reading Terminal Market', in www.billypenn.com (2018).
Alfonso Morales, 'Marketplaces: Prospects for Social, Economic, and Political Development', Journal of Planning Literature, 26 (2011), 3-17.
———, 'Planning and the Self-Organization of Marketplaces', Journal of Planning Education & Research, 30 (2010), 182-97.
———, 'Public Markets as Community Development Tools', Journal of Planning Education and Research, 28 (2008), 426-40.
Alfonso Morales and Steven Balkin, 'The Value of Benefits of a Public Street Market: The Case of Maxwell Street', Economic Development Quarterly, 9 (1995), 304.
Richard Munch, 'Social Integration ', in International Encyclopedia for the Social and Behavior Sciences (2015).
'Project for Public Spaces Case Study: Findlay Market, Cincinnati, Ohio', Project for Public Spaces https://www.pps.org/places/findlay-market.
'Public Markets as a Vehicle for Social Integration and Upward Mobility', in Phase I Report: An Overview of Existing Programs and Assessment of Opportunities (New York, New York, Project for Public Spaces, Inc. & Partners for Livable Communities 2003).
'Reading Terminal Market: Day Stall Merchants', 2018) <https://readingterminalmarket.org/merchant/day-stall-merchants/>.
David Studdert and Sophie Watson, Markets as Sites for Social Interaction: Spaces of Diversity, Public Spaces Series (Bristol, UK, Published for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by Policy Press, 2006).
Ronnie Tay, 'Hawker Centres, Levelling the Playing Field with Food ', Urban Solutions 2014.
'What Makes a Successful Place', Project for Public Spaces (2018) <https://www.pps.org/article/grplacefeat>.
Tad Wilkes, 'Food Halls and Markets Still on-Trend ', in Hotel F&B (2017).