Vending the city : mapping the policy, policing and positioning of street vending in New York City

Abstract

tolerance of their activities; governments often allow street vendors in certain areas of the city, while relocating street vendors from sidewalks in others. In the absence of meaningful, in-depth datasets on urban informality, studies investigating this variation have had to rely on case studies, anecdotal material and qualitative neighborhood comparisons. As a result, there have been no large-scale empirical studies undertaking city-wide analysis of the policing of urban informality. This thesis overcomes such limitations by using a mix of administrative data, mobile sensing, GIS mapping and qualitative methods to uncover informality's relationship with the state and the larger urban fabric in New York City. Through visualization and empirical analysis of the enforcement landscape vis-à-vis socioeconomic variables in New York, this project highlights the underlying impulses that lead to uneven regulatory outcomes: disparate claims on urban citizenship and a city's move towards more privatized urbanism. At the same time, my methodology allows this thesis to display the unique interactions street vending has with each neighborhood's socio-spatial environment, resulting in the creation of diverse vending cultures. By recognizing this vibrancy and detangling the determinants of the spatial landscape of vending rule enforcement, this thesis advocates for a fairer regulatory schema for informal commerce.