The overall objective of the Marakanda Project is, briefly, to foster the social and economic development of the partner cities by creating a cluster of historic city markets through strengthening relationships among them, improving governance and synergies among public institutions, market operators and experts and valorising high quality agro food and artistic handicraft productions. Within the project framework, the present publication was finalized for disseminating the scientific results of the work was done about the definition and selection of guidelines concerning markets and their development. What is the major interest in fronting such a challenge for the academic community? And could the enhancement of urban markets be an interesting research topic? This is a synthesis of the research activity made by the group of the University of Genoa and by other partners, but also a stimulus and an invitation of taking into account these themes (and those related to) for further research findings.

Ilaria Delponte is an Engineer and PhD in Town and Territorial Planning, her research interests are addressed to town planning and mobility. She carries out scientific activities for the Department DICCA at the Polytechnic School of Genoa, where she has been teaching Town and Territorial Planning since 2008. Recently, she became a member of the Operational Committee of the Pole of Advanced Research in Safety, Security and Intermodality in Transport Systems - TRANSIT, she has been involved since 2011 in the research tasks of the Project "TRANSFORMation Agenda for Low Carbon Cities" (FP7 Smart Planning) besides being a member of the Steering Committee of the Marakanda Project.