City streets are social spaces, places where people are
interacting. Cars, office workers, dogwalkers, panhandlers and buskers all interact with
the surrounding built environment: shops, buildings, benches, trees. The street isn’t
a place to funnel people and cars from point A to B, it is one of our most important
social gathering spaces no matter where you are, from New York to Vancouver to Osaka to
Cairo, streets are where the abstract concept of "urbanity" reveals itself
through the bustle of people and business. Streets are the realm of economy as well as
society, and the exchange of goods and services sits at the bottom of a street’s
success. What would a street be without a corner store, a bank, a restaurant? Nobody is
denying that commerce is fundamental to a lively urban environment, yet many cities insist
on regulating and often prohibiting street commerce that does not occur within the
confines of a building: street vending.
One street vendor, Amelia Susi, is the picture of
Boston’s Italian North End. Sitting on Salem Street, she passes the time by selling
lemonade and watching the parade of tourists and locals roll by. She is the embodiment of
all that makes the North End a fantastic neighbourhood: an outgoing observer of tiny,
winding streets where cars share the roadway with people; character-filled brick tenements
twisting in every direction and a medley of restaurants, bakeries, laundries and Italian caffès throughout the flowing alleys. Yet Susi’s lemonade-selling incurred the wrath
of the city planning board, who threatened to shut her operation down because she was
operating without a permit.
Susi and her supporters won the battle to operate
sans-permit, but the question remains: why are street vendors so tightly regulated? Often
bylaws prohibiting street vendors selling food are due to sanitary concerns. But many
other types of vendors are banned or forced to apply for expensive permits, too. In most
cities, it is illegal to set up a stand selling crafts or paintings without a permit.
Cities seem to be afraid that by letting street commerce take its natural course, mayhem
will reign and streets will become chaotic and congested places. This ignores the fact
that impromptu markets will only spring up where there is a demand, not on every street.
Even if they do become congested, is this such a bad thing? Far too much emphasis is
placed on smooth traffic flow when cities, by nature, are congested.
Other concerns related to street vending and natural
street markets are that they reduce business of surrounding shops. In fact, the opposite
may be true: street markets attract people to the markets, who in turn spend money in the
permanent shops surrounding the marketplace. In 1994, Chicago’s Maxwell Street
Market, a long-standing and largely unregulated street market, was closed, downsized and
moved to another street by city authorities. A trio of academics, Alfonso Morales, Steven
Balkin and Joseph Persky, estimated that moving the market cost Maxwell Street businesses
US$49.3 million. At its peak period each year, the market drew nearly 20,000 shoppers.
Street vendors and street markets are simply natural
progressions of a healthy urban street. They draw shoppers from around the city and
provide economic opportunities to independent citizens like Amelia Susi. By imposing a
labyrinthine system of permits and regulations on vendors, cities are harming the
potential vibrancy of neighbourhoods, reducing the amount of money local businesses can
receive. Streets are social places and it is only logical that vendors be allowed to take
advantage of that constant human interaction. Cities will be better places if only we
allowed them to run naturally without miring their progress in permits and regulations.