The Organization of Quito's Urban Markets: Towards a Reinterpretation of Periodic Central Places

Using data from the city of Quito, this paper compares inter-urban and intra-urban market systems and demonstrates the factors underlying the existence of mobile traders and periodic markets in an urban environment. Quito has a nested hierarchy of periodic and daily markets with a moderate degree of temporal integration. Unlike inter-urban market systems, however, the city's intra-urban system has a high degree of agglomeration, a number of specialist higher order markets which sell almost no lower order goods, and a lack of markets which are exclusively periodic without any daily component. J. H. Stine's widely accepted interpretation of mobile trading and periodic markets suggests that mobile and fixed traders selling the same goods are unlikely to coexist, and that periodic markets and mobile traders die out as urbanization and economic development take place. Although periodic marketing has declined in the most developed and urbanized societies, it is shown that Stine greatly oversimplifies the causes of this decline. In Quito, fixed and mobile traders coexist and compete with one another, often selling the same goods simultaneously in the same markets. Both groups include parttime and full-time traders, and many mobile traders follow well established cyclical itineraries between the different markets. The survival of periodic markets and mobile traders within such a large urban area is most easily explained by the policies of the municipal authorities, the socio-economic characteristics of the urban population, and the nature of the city's growth