‘An area that governs itself ’: Informality, uncertainty and the management of street vending in New York City

Abstract

Laws governing street vending in New York City are confusing, convoluted, at times contradictory and difficult to enforce with any sort of consistency. In this context of uncertainty and illegibility, the practice of street vending in New York and particularly in central areas of Manhattan, is managed in decentralized, privatized and informal ways. The result is a variegated landscape of street vending that is less a function of the rights that the city grants to vendors or the restrictions the city puts on them and more a reflection of the power, influence, resources and resolve of property owners and business improvement districts to exert control over vending and manage public space using techniques of surveillance, intimidation and physical interventions in the streetscape. This article describes how this landscape is produced and lived, while demonstrating the ways in which uncertainty, legal ambiguity and informal practice are intrinsic to the current regime of spatial management in New York.

Tradition of Healthy Food Access in Low-Income Neighborhoods: Price and Variety of Curbside Produce Vending Compared to Conventional Retailers

“…With the exception of the newest produce truck, all the vendors knew each other and several were related. It is not uncommon for street vendors to rely solely on social networks for raising capital (Bhowmik, 2005; Devlin, 2011), but access to formal credit lines and government programs could greatly aid in scaling up this model. To this end, vendor-to-vendor social networks may play a key role in sustaining these businesses, particularly if vendors pool assets and share costs for produce purchases and delivery.…”

Avenues into Food Planning: A Review of Scholarly Food System Research

“…These smaller, more mobile food distribution models require little start-up, service a large proportion of the urban population (Bhowmilk 2005; Vallianatos 2009) can easily target schools and food deserts (Tester et al 2010), and circumvent the need to own real estate. While not evaluated in terms of healthy food and urban nutrition, planners are pioneering efforts to understand these diffuse, informal networks with the finding that planning land-use regulations often severely impinge on their function (Bhowmilk 2005; Yasmeen 2006; Tester, Yen, and Laraia 2010; Devlin 2011; Brinkley, Chrisinger, and Hillier forthcoming). …”

“…Bottom-up policies are in direct tension with a larger planning meta-narrative of discomfort with informal systems (Assaad 1996; Morales 2010; Devlin 2011) particularly with regard to street vending (Bhowmilk 2005; Tester et al 2010) and informal waste management (Assaad 1996). In food-stressed cities, the literature indicates that the informal food sector and waste-collection sector is large and capable but not legitimized by planners (Assaad 1996; Leybourne and Grant 1999; Bhowmilk 2005; Vallianatos 2009).…”

Licensing, Popular Practices and Public Spaces: An Inquiry via the Geographies of Street Food Vending

“…Alternate interpretations have been more circumspect. Some see the rise of vending as sign of the messy informality of the global South flowing into cities of the North (Stoller, ), while the uncertainties vendors face indicate ‘novel, extra‐legal technique[s]' of public space management ‘embedded in and necessitated by' the ‘contemporary neoliberal entrepreneurial state' (Devlin, : 61). ‘New wave' vendors, conversely, are said to represent gentrification within the industry and the middle‐class appropriation of a traditional source of immigrant income (Zukin, ; Dunn, ).…”