Towards open-air markets for people in the post-Covid-19 era: Integrating shopping, transport and urban transformation

The transformation of transport spaces into open-air markets – catalysed by the Covid-19 pandemic – has become a durable trend, signalling a promising trajectory for sustainable urban transitions towards the ‘15-minute city’, where people can comfortably walk or cycle to shop or socialise. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics linking open-air markets, transport and urban public life remain underexplored. We address this gap through a mixed-methods case study of Paris – a city with a well-established network of open-air markets. Drawing on descriptive, correlation, regression and structural equation modelling analyses, combined with morphological mapping at citywide and walkable scales, we show that market operation relies on delicate balances: between walking, cycling, rapid transit and driving, as well as between determination/formal and affordance/informal. At the same time, transport spaces demonstrate a strong capacity to transition into open-air markets within a multiscale, people-centred transport system. Paris exemplifies this potential, functioning as a 15-minute city of everyday marketplaces, with vigorous public life between buildings. These findings call for moving beyond entrenched transport planning paradigms that privilege single-mode ‘highways’, towards approaches grounded in flexibility, inclusiveness and everyday community life.