At an art fair, no one will mind if all you want to do is wander around and drink a smoothie

Everyone in the London art world is getting ready for the monster Frieze art fair in Regent's Park. Frieze, a four-day extravaganza backed by the eponymous art magazine, was born this time last year. It is one of those hits that seem simply to come along at precisely the right time. Increasingly, art fairs are where the business is; indeed, they are becoming serious rivals to London's 800 art galleries.

At one end of the scale is Will Ramsay's Affordable Art Fair, which began five years ago and now takes place in Battersea, south London, twice a year. No artwork is priced over £2,500, but the fair attracts 135 galleries, all of which exhibit, and sell, rather a lot of work. Over four days, the Affordable Art Fair takes £3.4m, which stands for quite a few sales, given the modest pricing.

At the other end of the scale is the razzmatazz and spectacle of Frieze. The Guardian's art critic, Adrian Searle, called it "the first decent international commercial fair London has ever seen". It has British dealers clamouring alongside their international counterparts to exhibit work. Frieze has in fact done a great deal to quash the alarming notion being put about by various commentators that London had enjoyed a ten-year blip of importance in the visual arts world, and that the time was over. Last year's fair was a huge success: 124 dealers showed their work, attracting 27,000 visitors.

Meanwhile, the slightly more staid London Art Fair, which takes place at the Islington Design Centre in north London every New Year, has increased its business over the past six years from £2m to an estimated £15m. The capital now hosts 16 art fairs a year, including the Art on Paper Fair, the London Original Print Fair, artLONDON, Fresh Art and the Battersea Contemporary Art Fair.

The London art dealer Matthew Flowers, who runs Flowers Central in Cork Street and Flowers East in Hoxton, admits that between 60 and 70 per cent of his business now takes place at fairs. Other central London galleries are trying to get in on the act. Cork Street is holding a special breakfast, with around 20 galleries clubbing together for a beanfeast, trying to appear as if they are not bricks and mortar, but something much more tented and casual - indeed, something rather like a fair.

Perhaps one reason for the popularity of fairs is that they signal fun as well as trade. Lacking the perceived air of snobbery that Cork Street still fights to escape, fairs appear to be democratic arenas where fashionable people can chatter, observe and mingle with everyone else amid the favoured aesthetic of the in crowd - namely, contemporary art. You don't need to buy a painting; you don't even need to know about paintings. And no one will look down on you if what you want to do is wander around and drink a smoothie.

Such events have a long legacy in the capital: the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions at Somerset House were public events on a vast scale. Maybe it has something to do with the size of the city. Perhaps Londoners are just happier being part of a crowd in a vast marquee than they are operating like Manhattanites, sipping champagne in a poky gallery and feeling pressurised to come up with something clever.

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