Blogs

This past week the New York Times reported that some groups representing New York City's Korean-owned small grocery stores object to a proposal to license 1000 fruit and vegetable carts-- Green Carts-- in parts of the city where little produce is consumed. These objectors demand that if any licenses are granted, that grocery store owners be given preference.

Any time the government restricts the number of entrants to a market, the question inevitably arises whether the "right" people are being excluded. Before settling on a licensing scheme for its Green Cart program, New York might want to consider the experience of Los Angeles, California. There sidewalk vending is generally illegal, and has been for decades. About 10 years ago Los Angeles faced growing numbers of illegal vendors and decided to establish a place where they could ply their trade legally, in MacArthur Park. The city made room for as many as 30 vendors, but the number of illegal vendors who wanted to "go straight" far exceeded that. How did Los Angeles pick the lucky 30?

“It was the owners’ unwillingness to comply with repeated attempts to get counterfeiting activity out of the buildings that made us decide to go against them in this aggressive action,” concludes the article in the New York Times...and so goes the reputation of street merchants and markets where thousands of people, old and young, new immigrants and native born, earn their living or seek economic mobility for their families. But, is illegal merchandise pervasive among merchants and in markets? No, indeed, the stores raided in NYC harbored counterfeit merchandise, but a careful look at most vendors reveals the typical merchant avoids the illegal and obtains legitimate merchandise by hard work and carefully cultivated connections.

Cities all over the country are loosening restrictions on the street vendor. They are doing so for the obvious benefits merchants provide by marketing goods close to the consumer. But, besides the obvious benefit of proximity are unintended benefits of street commerce to public health.

How so?

First, street vendors bring produce to places under-served by storefront retail. For well over 100 years markets and pushcart peddlers have done so, interested readers can look at work by Helen Tangiers, John Cross, Steve Balkin, myself and others. Research clearly documents the importance of the street vendor to the city food system.

Second, vendors promote healthy pedestrian lifestyles. People get out and walk, they walk or bicycle to and around weekly markets all over the country and they walk to the produce peddler on the corner. Besides the exercise, the interaction promotes and healthy street scene.

Third, interaction contributes to health, an ear to listen to a story, a shared laugh, a sorrowful confession, these are all parts of repartee with a street vendor. The merchant has heard it all, business is no poorer for it and the day-to-day anxieties of life have an outlet.

Cities that welcome merchants and markets welcome a new avenue to a healthier community.

Openair is growing and becoming more functional thanks to JEO.NET a terrific ISP. We owe them a big thank-you for the migration and new look of the page.

We have new editors from other parts of the world, Sean Balkan from New York City and Lilia Voronkova from Russia. We remain thankful to Steve Balkin, without whom OPENAIR would not exist, and John Cross for their support and well-wishes.

Gregg Kettles, a law professor at Mississippi College of Law, and I are, with the help of JEO, fostering more functionality to the site. We aim for the same or greater levels of utility to the professional community of planners and social scientists, lawyers and economists, while increasing the usefulness to merchants and consumers at these markets, around the world.

Consider joining us in our work on Markets and Merchants!

Street vendors may be on the lowest rung of capitalism, but they are still on the ladder. Downtown business groups and local governments might see vendors and markets as a problem to be regulated, restricted or eliminated from the streets, but they simply attacking their kin.

Some vendors, those with the lowest overhead display merchandise in briefcases or portfolios, they spread blankets, use a hydrant or a trash can as a place to mark their space, but they are mobile and move to where they find the customer. Food vendors are also often employees. These nascent entrepreneurs take a basket of burritos, fruit, a cooler of drinks and provide fellow employees and passers-by with a bite to eat, either within the workplace but more likely from close by during a break in the day. Perhaps an empty lot has become a magnet for pushcarts or more elaborate displays. Merchants create their own infrastructure, protecting themselves and clients from the elements and allowing them to do business and people to shop.