The research focuses on metropolitan Barcelona and analyses in a quantitative way the relationship of time and space established between households, the 90 public market halls and the 74 publicly managed weekly open-air markets. _x000D_
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This investigation is based on the considerations that gave rise to the municipal policy Special Plan for Food Retail Facilities in Barcelona (PECAB 1986), drawn up in a context in which food trade was being transformed by technological changes that redesigned production and distribution, and eating and consumption habits were evolving. The policy would see markets as attractors of activity in neighbourhoods and municipalities, bringing together around them the proliferation of other food retail premises and making food supply a catalyst for urban life. At the same time, it would reduce the number of food shops in the city and increase their surface by establishing minimum floor areas, so that small traders would move to market halls. At the same time, food retailers housed in the surrounding blocks would act as satellites in relation to the market halls and increase the average sales area of the facilities, each contributing to the critical mass of the urban food supply infrastructure._x000D_
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The polarization of food trade around markets has continued to this day. The multi-scale two-dimensional reading of the Barcelona metropolitan food system shows that the distribution of food stores responds to a logic of clustering around market places. As a result of the research, fragments of the metropolitan fabric are detected according to the vulnerability in relation to access to food; and pedestrian paths are provided to promote sustainable speeds of life. The investigation sustains that the way a metropolis is fed determines its shape and the rhythm and quality of life of its inhabitants.

Eulàlia Gómez-Escoda (1) and Pere Fuertes (2)
(1) Barcelona Laboratory of Urbanism, ETSAB-UPC ; HABITAR Research group, ETSAV-UPC

 
ID Abstract: 212