Governing the nurturing city: the uneven enforcement of street food vending regulations

Abstract

Street vending has drawn recent attention from city governments in both the Global North and the Global South. This paper focuses on the regulation of street food vending and its enforcement in four cities: Bangkok, Chicago, Hanoi and Montpellier. It draws upon qualitative interviews, archival and newspaper research, and ethnography. The regulatory frameworks raise several issues, because they deny access to space and income for groups that are often underprivileged, and they neglect the roles of street food in the urban food system. We show that the actual enforcement of regulations is uneven between and within cities and between vendors. In some cases, street-level negotiations around enforcement may actually mitigate the negative effects on underprivileged vendors. Hence, the governance of street food vending appears to be more nuanced than the formal regulations that exist. We argue that the design of regulations should better consider the street vendors' voice and their needs.