Market Studies and Sections

As part of our manifesto, as we were looking at street life and the elements that make up the community, I did some market studies around Manchester. I did have a list of markets that I could visit but unfortunately didn't get to see all of them. The two I did visit though, Castlefield Market and Church Street Market were interesting to study and I particular found studying Church Street Market useful. I also got back into contact with Victoria Baths where I recently did a craft fair, asking for the layout as another case study. While I did hear back from them, I was unable to really use them as I wanted to look at what was where in relation to other stalls and how this might affect sales etc but there was no information as to which tables sold what. The key thing was the circulation around the fair. There was an order to the tables, creating a single 'street' through the fair. This was the same on the first floor.

Castlefield Market was different. From ground view, there didn't seem to be much order to the stalls but after I sketch out the plan, while there was still a sense of lack of order to the market, there was a clear route through. There was an order to the tables; food items were gathered together around the edges of the room while other items such as art work and home decorations were in the centre of the hall.

Church Street Market, just outside the Arndale Centre is a small row of what are essentially permanent pop-up shops. I only found it as I went past on the tram one day. It was very reminiscent of the markets in Cheetham Hill. The shops displayed their good on the street, creating a blurred boundary between public and semi public, what was street and what was shop. The canopy over the front of the shops also added to this sense of uncertainty.

I also saw this when I was working on my sections of Cheetham Hill Road. My first section through the industrial estate showed very clear boundaries between public/private, street/building etc but the further into Cheetham Hill I went, there were more overlaps and more public spaces that weren't just the street or the pavement. I began to wonder if this was a correlation with the sense community in the areas.