Other Markets

Architecture is politics in matter, a form of political conflictual practice that negotiates culture. This research project aims to investigate the architecture of `other markets`: informal spaces of exchange that have become paradigmatic sites for the emergence of `networked ecologies` in 21st century urban transformation. Spurred by economic deregulations and the intertwined mobilisation of people and goods, informal systems have taken on a global dimension in structuring how we connect to each other, how we inhabit our environments, and how we engage in political and social operations. Nodal points of these transformations, informal markets entertaining long-distance relations have emerged on the fringes of major cities as well as on the borders between different states. Amidst the economisation of all aspects of life and the expansion of transnational spaces, these sites have evolved into prototypes of novel and extreme material configuration. The investigations will focus on the modalities of socio-spatial production in informal markets and their implications for new models of co-existence and exchange. While these globally distributed nodes of the informal economy are often effects of political upheaval, economic destabilisation, migratory movements and new labour situations, they shape complex systems of alternate relations wherever and whenever institutional protocols have come to a deadlock. The research approaches these dynamics through theoretical and empirical investigations into the visual culture of informal markets. It situates the architectures of informal markets as performative practices indicative of globally enacted juridico-political alignments and examines their workings by way of field studies and on-site transdisciplinary exchange in three different world regions (China/Southeast Asia; the Americas/US borders; Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean). These findings will be correlated with the recent geocultural discourse on graduated mobility, transient land use and flexible citizenship: What roles can informal sites play in new regimes of governance and in alternate systems of exchange? This theoretical framework on the development and operation of `networked ecologies` will trace the relational structures, spatial formations and cross-cultural trajectories of informal markets to explore the ambit of informally co-ordinated urban conduct and translocal sociality that transgresses the realm of established institutional operations. An accompanying `atlas`, produced by the research, will illustrate how strategies of spatial appropriation, self-organised exchange and urban participation respond to the changing socio-economic condition of urban space and its tendencies to marketisation, transnationalisation and fragmentation. These results will demonstrate the catalytic potential of architecture in the translation of global practices into situated cultural logics and will thus provide an essential contribution to the transdisciplinary discourse on 21st century urban transformation.

In cooperation with researchers from around the world, the project Other Markets has investigated the potential of informal markets to instigate new forms of economic and social cooperation. Informal markets act as important places of cohesion during times of crisis. Without being planned, they emerge whenever people are excluded from the formal economy and forced to search for alternative sources of supplies and income. Globalisation over the last two decades has turned informal marketplaces into important nodes of a worldwide network of shadow trade. Informal markets have thus become decisive factors in the development of future societies. When it comes to assessing the role of informal markets, the debate is currently divided between two competing views: For some, social aspects are of primary importance. In their view, informal markets can constitute places to experiment with alternatives to consumption-oriented capitalism and to overcome associated problems such as its proneness to crises, its commitment to unfettered growth and subsequent environmental devastation. Others point to informal markets as a mechanism to offload the costs of precisely these capitalist logics onto the worlds poor. From this perspective, informal economies are not seen as providing alternatives but are regarded as shock absorbers of the hegemonic economic order. Based on 72 international case studies, the research has examined the handling of informal markets along their spatial development. These investigations have shown that in the majority of cases the history of informal markets is determined by external intervention. These operations range from the closure of markets and eviction of vendors to the transformation into permanent market halls and privately managed shopping malls. More often than not, these actions are taken without consultation of the market vendors and are thus marred by conflict. A significant research finding in this context is the fact that structural and spatial measures are presented as improving the conditions of informal marketplaces while also seeking to bring the informal sector in line with official economic flows. That way, both dominant perspectives on the informal economy come to serve the policy management of municipalities. Analyses of these developments have led the research to re-evaluate the potential of informal markets. As the range of interventions and the growing interest of international governing bodies in issues of informality shows, an essential value of informal markets lies in their ability to constitute distinct places of economic activity market environments geared towards trade and exchange which need to be recognised as important social resources. A key question regarding future dealings with informal markets thus relates to the ways in which competing claims on this resource are negotiated. Responses to this question, such as conceptualising informal markets as public commons, as well as other findings of the research have been made available for the public in the award-winning two-volume publication Informal Market Worlds (Atlas & Reader)