(University of the Witwatersrand; Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, 2016) Guya, Maria Jokudu
Marketplaces have been a part of societies for centuries and have served as public spaces of trading. While they exist in many different shapes and forms, common to all market places is interaction between traders and consumers. The market has thus always been a place of networking. Some marketplaces such as those of this case study are characterised by their provision of recreational spaces where people can interact with one another, thus shifting the focus of the market from solely trading to entertainment and socialising. The engagements between people, in these spaces, feed into their perceptions of places, they in turn shape the urban identities attributed to neighbourhoods.
The scope of the research aimed at exploring how periodic markets contribute to neighbourhood identity, specifically looking at and exploring the cases of the Neighbourgoods Market and the LoCrate Market. The main question thus asked is whether markets, particularly the aforementioned, impact neighbourhood identity and the ways in which they do so.
To answer these questions the research undertook a qualitative approach to get the perceptions of people, which were explored in relation to observations of both the neighbourhoods and markets. The dominant narratives that emerged through the research showed that context is an important determinant of identity.