Public Markets Strengthen Social Cohesion

Dec 31, 2008
May 1, 2024

Many cities and towns across the country are experiencing notable demographic shifts as immigrant groups move to the U.S. and establish new families and communities. Public markets have often been the most socially diverse public places in a community, bringing people of different ages, genders, races ethnicities, and socioeconomic status together around the experiences of food, shopping, music and conversation. While markets vary in their degrees of social interaction, few are homogenous and many are represent the diversity of 21st century American communities.

Many of the markets awarded funding from PPS, through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant program, were located in communities with growing immigrant populations. Market organizers saw an opportunity through their markets to bring together different and new members of the community. They developed strategies to create spaces of inclusion by having non-English speaking individuals on their staff, recruiting new growers from immigrant communities, and transformed their market spaces into places where cultural barriers were dissolved, marginalized residents were empowered and differences were celebrated. Increasing cultural diversity became an asset that brought new products, customers, vendors and social programming to their markets.

Resources

Diversifying Farmers Markets Report

Markets for All


The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Heading One

Heading Two

Heading Three

Heading Four

Heading Five
Heading Six

Body Text    Body Link

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Here is some highlighted text from the article.
Caption
Caption
Caption
Caption

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

  • Bulleted List Item 1 Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
  • Bulleted List Item 2 Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
  1. Ordered List Item 1
  2. Ordered List Item 2
Comments
Related Articles

Contact Us

Want to unlock the potential of public space in your community? Get in touch!