Accommodate street vendors during the urban development process : with two empirical cases of Zhu Lian (ZL), and Guan Dong (GD) public markets in Hsinchu City, Taiwan

Abstract

Every day, the recurring scene of conflict between street vendors and municipal authorities can be found in virtually every major city around the world. Through licensing, zoning, or relocating, municipal governments devise numerous laws and ordinances to control street vendors in the urban environment. Unfortunately, aggressive regulatory approaches rarely can solve the problems at stake and street vendor management remains a vexing conundrum for many local governments in the developing countries. This paper uses the Taiwanese city of Hsinchu to analyze the reasons why the Hsinchu municipal government was able to successfully relocate street vendors into a thriving public market in one instance (the Zhu Lian market) while unable to replicate this success in another instance (the Guan Dong market). The review of literature illustrates that street vendor relocating processes face three major barriers: (1) ill-conceived location; (2) bureaucratic conformity; and (3) customer base loss. In these two cases, the street vendors shared similar geographical contexts and were both relocated in situ. However, only the ZL vendors managed to overcome other relocation barriers and create a successful market, the GD vendors failed. Field work was carried out in Hsinchu city Taiwan to find out the factors contributing to the success/failure of these two relocation processes. The conclusion shows street vendor organizations play a crucial role during the relocation process. They bond street vendors together and bridge diverse interests, establish their own social norms and etiquette. On the other hand, even though street vendor organizations may serve an efficient solution to address the relocation puzzle, the paper also points out the potential pitfalls of relying on strong vendor organizations in managing street vendors in the city. Under some circumstances, strong street vendor leaders may undermine the city government's administrative authority, and reconfigure the political structure of the city.