MAPS WE CARRY, CITIES WE MAKE
By Christopher Moise, OAA, FRAIC
The ByWard Market holds the city’s memory. I do not mean nostalgia. I mean the way a place stores the habits of a thousand days and then hands them back to you when you arrive. The moment I step onto the paving of the ByWard Market, I can feel the routes I have taken before return to my legs. I know where the morning sun will be. I know which corner carries music in a soft wind. I know where the first snow piles up and where slush lingers. My body carries a map, and the Market keeps confirming it.
This year’s Ottawa Architecture Week theme, “Mapping the Market,” is more than just a concept on paper. It is a daily practice. We map with our feet, with our eyes, with the small decisions we make as we cross a lane or choose a bench. We map when we frequent our favourite pub, grab take-out, look for shade in July and a windbreak in February. We map when we find a stall by smell before we see it. These maps are personal. Over time they sync with the maps of others until a shared picture emerges. That is the collective memory of a city. The Market is a place where that memory remains alive. It also asks something of us. Memory does not sweep the snow, pay the rent, or repair a joint. The Market needs our support if it is to have a viable future. Show up in February, not just in June. Buy the berries, sit for the soup, tip the musician, and speak up for the small design decisions that make these acts possible.
As an architect and urban designer, I am trained to see geometry first: curb radii, paving joints, sightlines, stall spacing. As I frequent the Market, I notice other things: the way a busker draws a semicircle of people and leaves a gap for a stroller to pass, or vendors who tilt a crate to catch sun. Here people pause at the meeting of two materials without knowing why. Design and use are in conversation here and each corrects the other. When design listens, use becomes safer, richer, and more durable. When use speaks clearly, design learns where to give and where to ask for more.
Public space is the city’s memory written on the ground. In the ByWard Market the script is layered. There is the plan that set out the grid and lanes, the buildings that hold edges and keep warmth on a cold day, and the recurring acts that renew the ritual of being together. Markets are honest places. If the ground is uneven, people trip. If shade is missing, people leave. If the crossing is awkward, someone hesitates and a small crowd forms behind them. These frictions become part of the mental map. A good plan reduces bad friction and adds good friction, the kind that slows you down just enough to notice.
Pedestrianization helps with this memory work, not as a one-time closure, but as a steady reweighting of the map toward walking and rolling. When the walk is clear and continuous, people store that route. They return to it. They tell others. The map spreads.
A car-light space helps vendors too. It frees the square from constant negotiation with traffic and lets deliveries occur in short, reliable windows. This is not anti-car. It is pro-city. It takes the most valuable blocks and gives them to the most valuable activity, which is people meeting one another without fear or hurry. Supporting this shift is part of supporting the Market. Accept the delivery windows. Choose the slower turn. Vote for the budget that funds the paving you want to walk on.
Edges are how memory is framed. In the Market, the best edges are porous with storefronts to show life inside. Patios can feel like rooms open to the street, not private forts. Corners can hold a small performance without blocking a curb cut. Benches should face action and offer a back to lean on combined with planting which reads as shelter, not decoration. When edges are right, the human map expands. A person who does not usually linger will linger. A parent will sit while a child tests a slight grade with a toy car. An older adult will choose a route because it feels legible.
Ground tells truth. Notice when pavers sit flat through freeze and thaw with joints that do not catch a wheel. Grades to move water where it should go do not surprise you with a slick seam in January. The Market is a long test of maintenance. Design should respect that. Choose materials that work with real equipment. Size tree pits for long lives. Make service panels easy to reach. Build power and water into the places where vendors set up. The more the basics are handled, the more the market can hold time and memory without constant interruption. Our role is to insist on these basics and to fund them, because the future is built out of details that last.
Programming is part of mapping. The calendar matters, and so does a light touch. A square that can reset in an hour invites many small uses: lunch performances, shoulder-season stalls, winter lights that draw people for a short evening and then release the space back to quiet. When the rules are simple and the services are obvious, people learn how to participate. The map in their head gains more layers. They return because the place rewards them with choices. Participation is support. The more we use the Market across seasons and times of day, the more resilient it becomes.
Governance shapes memory too. Stewards who are present and supportive help the Market act like the public room it is. Success should be measured in human terms: dwell time, perceived safety across age and gender, canopy growth, small business vitality, and accessibility that works on the ground. These are all signals that tell us the map is healthy. They are also the signals people use, even if they do not name them. If the signals are strong, they come back and bring others. A strong collective map is a form of resilience. When stalls shift or a street is under repair, people adapt because they remember how the Market works. Routes re-knit. Vendors reconfigure. The place keeps its promise.
Heritage, here, is a living practice. The Market is old because it has kept serving. The best way to honour that is to keep it useful now. That means routes you can trust in winter and shade you can count on in summer. Surfaces that allow a cane, a wheelchair, a delivery cart, and a toddler’s sprint at the same time. It means rooms of air that feel safe and welcome, even when full.
I know the Market as a designer, but I also know it as a person who buys berries, meets friends, and walks at odd hours. My map is not special. It is typical. That is why it matters. When I argue for fewer cars in its core, for better edges, for honest ground, I am not arguing from theory. I am arguing from the maps we already carry. The Market remembers us. It will keep remembering if we keep showing up, spending wisely, and defending the small, practical choices that let public life happen. If we do that, the collective map will thicken, the Market will flourish, and the city will continue to find itself here, in public, one ordinary day at a time.
