Architecture, urban form, and assemblage aesthetics in Mexico City’s street markets

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider Mexico City’s street markets as temporary and modular architectural products that emerge out of intensive, routine and repeated negotiations over urban spatial affordances in a crowded metropolitan environment. Particular attention is given to the polychromatic visual form, not as some detached work of art, but as a collection of tiny signals of the labor, commerce and social relations unfolding below. Design/methodology/approach For this paper, the author has deployed a methodological approach that blends scholarship and creative practice. From 2016 to 2018, the author conducted fieldwork during three trips to Mexico City, making site visits, undertaking structured observation and engaging in conversations with vendors and customers. The author also collected data available from various municipal agencies, and reportage from newspaper articles, blogs and magazines. Meanwhile, the author developed a creative practice method grounded in the production of rendered aerial views, which allowed for the identification of typologies based on the organizational logics of the street markets. Findings The paper identifies five typologies of street market, including: the linear, the circuit, the cluster, the contour and the hybrid. The application of these typologies by street market vendors allows for the optimal exploitation of spatial allotments for buying and selling goods. In the end, the paper reveals the polychromatic markets as expressions of an assemblage aesthetic, each a variation on a theme grounded in the cumulative daily choices, desires, routines and thickly woven collaborations of working-class people in one of the world’s great conurbations. Research limitations/implications The study is based on a limited number of cases. There are currently 1,400 street markets regularly operating in Mexico City, 200 of which set up on any given day. In order to provide some depth and texture to the study, this paper only examines 15 markets falling into the five typologies identified above. Further research would help to refine these typologies, quantify the daily and quarterly transactions that take place in the markets and assess the impacts of street vending on their surroundings. Social implications Mexico City’s street markets provide employment for some 800,000 vendors, suppliers, transporters and laborers. They also provide one-fifth of all household goods purchased in the city and 40 percent of all fresh produce. And despite the conflicts that arise, they offer an associational approach to the labor of street vending, as well as crucial economic opportunities for women with children. However, it is apparent that street markets face a range of challenges that could be mitigated with supportive policies. Originality/value While there is a small and growing literature on Mexico City’s street markets, there is no work to date that examines the assemblage aesthetic that comprises their daily emergence on the landscape. Nor do any extant studies situate the aesthetic composition within the varied urban forms, social relations and labor practices that undergird the street markets.

Prospects for research in architecture and urbanism

“…At an urban scale, a number of papers explore the multilayered nature of the urban condition. Heathcott’s (2019) work examines the everyday street market environment in Mexico City. Identifying five spatial typologies of street markets, including the linear, the circuit, the cluster, the contour and the hybrid, his work divulges the polychromatic markets as expressions of an assemblage aesthetic involving cumulative daily choices, desires, routines and densely intertwined associations of working-class individuals and communities.…”

Frying edible vegetable oil quality from street-food vendors in a Metropolitan area in the Central Highlands of Mexico

“…The second workday stearic acid decrease is difficult to explain because of several physicochemical changes during deep-frying as oil absorption by food and fatty acid transfer into the oil (Torres & Rojas, 2018;Dobarganes & Márquez-Ruiz, 2015;Sayon-Orea et al, 2015). It should be mentioned that the present research has shown real food vendor condition operations, identified in Mexican traditional markets (Tianguis), which are a common food offer practice in Metropolitan areas in Mexico (Espinoza-Ortega et al, 2016;Heathcott, 2019;Lozano et al, 2019). These kinds of vendors workday's real conditions effects were studied; otherwise, the related reports based on controlled frying conditions (Temperature or one kind of food processed, mainly) presented higher fatty acid oil deterioration degrees, but at higher temperatures and with no edible vegetable oil mix (Marinova et al, 2012).…”

“…Toluca Valley and Mexico City shown some market type named Tianguis, which are temporary and informal street markets, where one of their higher sales is food. Food street vendors around America Latina are not always observed by health government authorities; therefore, obesogenic intake is freely sold (Carrete & Arroyo, 2014;Heathcott, 2019;Lozano et al, 2019). Street fast food is a representative culinary endemic menu and an important viable food alternative for workers, who are not able to go home for lunch because of distance, lack of resources, or traveling time.…”

“…Mexican consumers appreciate food flavour, colour, texture, and smell; besides, their preference is directly associated with social, economic, or traditional aspects. Moreover, health care is not always one of the principals considered aspects (Heathcott, 2019;Lozano et al, 2019). Espinoza-Ortega et al (2016) reported that behaviour and motivation diversities from Mexicans about food consumption are an open research field, which needs more academic and scientific reports.…”

Knowledge spaces in architecture and urbanism – a preliminary five-year chronicle

“…The space of the public realm and assessment of designed environments The knowledge space addressing the public realm and assessment studies of built environments (building and urban environments) seems to be very well-established given the intensity of contributions which vary in purpose, scope, scale and approach to investigation. Examples of recent contributions include the work of Heathcott (2019) which places emphasis on polychromatic visual form in examining the temporality and modularity of Mexico City's street markets; the work of Azzali (2020) which identifies best practices and successful examples used during and after mega-events, in the contexts of London, Sochi and Rio de Janeiro, to transform event sites and venues into livable public open spaces (POSs) that contribute to a vibrant city life; the work of Hollander and Anderson (2020) which explores the relationship between urban facades and affective feelings through an empirical study that responds to the question of how do people perceive edge conditions in urban environments; and the work of Vukovic et al (2021) which adopts a quality of urban life perspective in the structured assessment of three POSs in Belgrade. Notably, key contributions that advance methods or expand the boundaries of the knowledge space include the work of Drista and Biloria (2021) which articulates a critical review of studies that map the urban environment using continuous physiological data collection and concludes with conceptual model that aims to mitigate urban stress at the city and the user levels; and more recently the work of (Tahroodi and Ujang, 2021) which establishes an understanding of the interrelations between the visual and physical accessibility attributes of path structure and their impacts on the intensity of passive social interaction across urban parks in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.…”