02 Pike Place Market
The Market as Organizer of an Urban CommunitY Pike Place Market, Seattle The Pike Place Market, which climbs a steep hillside not far.above the Seattle waterfront (fig. 2-1), is one of America's great urban places. Some people, hearing its name without ever having been there, might think the Pike Place Market won the Rudy Bruner Award for Excellence in the Urban Environment because it is a "festival marketplace." They would be wrong, and it is worth pointing out why. The places that developers call festival markets are shopping centers that offer food and goods in an entertaining urban setting. Festival markets have wonderful aromas, public performers, and lots of small shops. They typically have interesting views. And all these things can be found at Pike Place, which is certainly festive. But the differences between Pike Place and a festival market are profound. Unlike festival markets, the Pike Place Market is a place where people live as well as shop. Some of Pike Place's inhabitants are wealthy, but a gleater number are poor or of moderate income; they occupy new or rehabilitated apartments mainly because an effort was made to obtain government subsidies. The chain merchants that operate in festival mar- kets are not allowed at Pike Place; on the contrary, Pike Place strives to rely on independent enterprises whose owners are on the premises, making their concerns and their personalities felt. Although there are plenty of restaurants and take-out food stands at Pike Place, just as in a festival market, much of the food at Pike Place comes in a basic, less expensive form-raw, forhome consumption.
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