The term "market" originally portrayed a public space for economic transactions but the term has since evolved into an abstract and disputed idea. Despite modern markets seemingly omnipresent nature, their specific geographies have undergone relatively little analysis.

This collection of new essays rediscovers the physical space that markets inhabit and explore how the impact of political, social and economic factors determine the shape of a particular market space. The essays present new research from the fields of geography, economics, political economy and planning and provide valuable case study material to show how markets are contested, constructed and placed. Rather than separate markets from the surrounding society and state, these essays connect markets to their wider context and showcase how economic geography can combine with other disciplines to throw new light on spaces of exchange.