ABSTRACT
Belo Horizonte (Brazil) has a culture of markets. Yet, its enclosed public marketplaces are under threat. Governed as food supply infrastructures, they lost relevance due to the competition with modern forms of provision. After years of neglect and disinvestment, public discussions on the future of two public markets prompted the mayor to form a multi-department workgroup to discuss alternatives for markets’ management. The group reunited among others social services, planning, culture and treasury directors, demonstrating the municipality’s awareness about markets’ multiple functions for cities, defended by academia. This chapter discusses Belo Horizonte’s local government’s representation of public markets’ urban relevance and to what extent this perception connects markets to the attainment of social justice in the city. It analyses the chosen governance strategy, a tendering transferring markets to private management. The process and conditions of the tendering indicate a vision where markets and social justice aims overlap to a certain extent. The chapter explores these linkages, their potentials and limitations through Fainstein’s democracy, equity and diversity justice triad (2014). Belo Horizonte markets’ governance example reveals the complexity of cities and their management realities, where adopted planning solutions try to balance growth and equity agendas in creative ways.
