Episode 3 | Building Toronto into a Market City

In this episode, Marina Queirolo of Market City TO reveals the ways in which public markets can facilitate short supply chains within a regional food system, support small and medium retail businesses, and build community. Connecting production and processing with consumption and access, Marina illuminates how a market city can put into action a food distribution system that includes a diversity of seeds, crops, foods, peoples, and cultures. Through a networked approach, a market city model of public food infrastructure bridges neighbourhoods, cities, and regions. Listeners will hear about the many different types of public markets across Toronto, and their benefits; they will gain insight into some of the biggest challenges that public markets faced during the Covid-19 pandemic; and they will learn how markets help bring resiliency to food systems and what more is needed to help markets flourish. The Feeding City Lab produced this podcast episode from Marina Queirolo’s plenary talk (“Market Cities: Building the ‘Missing Middle’ in Sustainable Food Systems”), delivered on December 9, 2022, at the Sustainable Food and Farming Futures Symposium at the University of Toronto Scarborough.