Colombo: a night market on the Galle Face green run to a standard, every weekend

A first step

Walk the green on a weekend evening and note what is missing: seating, lighting, bins, card payments, a price board. Then propose a short set of standards to 10 of the vendors already trading there, with a shared cleaning rota paid by a small weekly fee from each. The number who agree to pay, written down with their stall names, tells you whether a managed market can stand.

Who pays first

A food vendor already trading on the green, who pays a weekly pitch fee because a clean, managed market brings more customers who spend more.

What leaves today

Colombo's visitors spend their evenings in hotel restaurants and malls, and the city's best open space stays a place to walk through rather than spend in.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. SeventeenOne Building
  One building, and what a city could be known for

More from cluster 26

• 477Colombo: the Pettah as a managed market street, cleaned, lit and sold to visitors as the best bazaar in Asia
• 478Kandy: the lake promenade with cafés and evening performances, not only the temple
• 479Galle: a residents' company that owns the Fort's tourist lets and keeps the residents in
• 480Jaffna: a culinary capital, the crab and the palmyrah sold as a cuisine
• 481Trincomalee: the harbour as a sailing and diving centre for the Bay of Bengal
• 482Negombo: the fish market and the canals as Sri Lanka's Venice, done before the residents leave

All 10 ideas in this cluster