The Market and the City by Donatella Calabi

Author:Donatella Calabi [Calabi, Donatella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Marketing, General, Urban & Regional, History, Political Science, Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development
ISBN: 9781351885959
Google: PTUrDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-07-05T01:29:36+00:00

Ownership and conflicts of interest

Within the urban market areas, the coexistence of properties owned by the state, the city, the church or mosque, a few large families or several very small proprietors explained their often opposing interests and conflicts, as well as the continuous illegalities committed by one against the other. In the sixteenth century, the wide banks along the Grand Canal in the Rialto area and some of the existing spaces, such as the covered meat and fish markets and the flour Fondaco, still belonged to the state. In Genoa, between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the legal reaffirmation of the coast as public domain, the income of which would always belong to the Commune, contributed to the later construction of a large market – the emboli of the Ripa – and to the management of all the public space allocated to commerce (the Molo, reduced to a specialised enclave with regular lots, the area of the Banchi and the other squares).39 By contrast, in the Spanish–Muslim cities, the shops backing on to the mosque fell under its jurisdiction, while the butchers’ shops, the meat market and the bakery were municipal. The powerful guilds played a role in occupying and organising the surrounding roads or neighbourhoods. In London, the public food markets (meat, fruit and vegetables, and dairy products) and the places where a much wider range of goods were sold (woollen fabrics, clothing, lead, nails) were city property and were administered by the market committee. Issues such as the need to reorganise boundaries, to expand or to acquire new plots of ground were handled by the City’s land committee.40 Everywhere, however, land ownership was overlaid by an intricate system of rents, concessions and taxes, by manoeuvres to raise money to handle crisis situations, by transitory sales rights and limited authorisations for stands, and by the preferred and varied land uses occasionally suggested or prohibited. Town natives were either favoured or excluded so as to offer guarantees to other merchants. Very small family concerns and their trade comprised the basis of the extraordinary commercial development of these cities and the solidity of their economy. A ‘place’ outdoors in the square, up against a building or under porticoes of varied depths, a site that could be occupied by a stall, a tent, a kiosk or even just a few tables, was often as important in exploiting the area’s possibilities as owning a stone-built store. This is demonstrated by persistent private demands for the right to occupy just a little more than one square metre in the narrow passageway next to San Giacomo at Rialto or in the calle behind the main mosque in Seville, or by the hope of being able to pass this property right on to one’s heirs. Often the precarious and crumbling structures that may have originally been illegal or legally put up on a temporary basis were later restructured or more formally defined by a building of greater ‘decorum’ and more stable character. This is what

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