Reworking Spaces: A New Market in a New Town

This article explores a local market in a new smart city. It recognises the agency of diverse players like the government that constructed and still maintains the market, or the customers, primarily the affluent residents of the city. But the case in point here is the vendors. The market is a programmed place of everyday exchange and consumption for the local residents. Research reveals the continuous recodification and reworking of market space by the vendors, driven by their everyday business and other necessities. By reinventing the structure/s and purpose/s, the vendors add new meanings to the market as a space of cordiality and collaboration, of contention and conflict and of discontent and fear. This may be taken as the assertion of vendors’ right to the market. This assertion is definitely political.