I can actually speak to this issue from a position of expertise: I used to work for the city agency that regulated street vending. You're missing a lot of the problems unregulated street vending can pose. Some of those issues are noted elsewhere in the comments (health risks, mostly), but you're missing the difference between dirty restaurants (I read a lot of those reports, too) and dirty street vendors - a restaurateur makes significant investment, often off borrowed family money, in making sure that his restaurant stays in business. If he is found in violation of health codes often enough, he can lose his license, as well as his (or his family's) life savings. if the churro lady gets a violation, she is going to ignore the fine, because she never had a license to lose in the first place, and if a day's worth of product and her shopping cart get confiscated? It's not the end of the world for her. When entrepreneurs have significant skin in the game, they're more likely to follow the rules that protect their customers.
Also, it's not really zoning that prohibits street vendors (food or otherwise) from setting up shop on the sidewalk, or not strictly speaking. In a city as busy as NYC, all public space is at a premium, and there is significant competition for it. The city can dole out permits in places where there it deems there is enough room for a street vendor to set up shop, but not where it is so crowded that a cart will block pedestrian flow. Of course, vendors want to be where there is the most foot traffic, so there's where the friction arises, and when there's a traffic jam on the sidewalk, it's most likely because an illegally sited vendor has taken over the public way for his personal business.
Another issue, beyond crowding, is that there are some places we just don't want vendors everywhere. Parks, for example. The well-spread-out hot dog carts? Sure. But t-shirt vendors all over Sheep Meadow? Nope. And no one wants to be pestered on the subway by vendors, both because of crowding (looking at you, churro lady) and because in subway cars you become a captive market, unable to avoid the endless sales pitches. Even libertarians want a break from in-your-face commerce from time to time, no?
Oh yeah, I agree about the handbag guys for the most part and the stolen CVS stuff guys in DC. I guess I’m mostly talking about a lighter hand on food and small business in general.
My other point about the kei trucks (not made here but made in pieces about vehicles in particular) is not just that they’re cheap but that they’re *properly scaled for cities.* In other words, they’re not for joyriding on the interstate. The Europeans call their little cars “city cars.” American cars are “suburban cars” but nobody understands them in that way.
99% Invisible's latest podcast episode chronicles the "leaf blower wars" in Los Angeles. It's about the tension between elites/environmentalists who hate the noise/pollution and gardeners who rely on the machines to make their living. Though the episode doesn't frame it this way, it draws out a kind of NIMBYism against small-scale commerce. People want things to be pristine, but they don't want the noise—and they don't consider what the gardener will do when he doesn't have a huge time- and labor-saving device to work with anymore.
Related to the churro ladies, some of the other commenters bring up valid points: health concerns, unfairness toward brick-and-mortar restaurants that have to comply with all sorts of other rules and regs, rights of way and public access concerns. The health code regime in NY is another instance of its anti-small-business bias: it's capricious and cumbersome and serves mostly as a tax on restaurants, with marginal health and safety benefits but higher prices for consumers. The right move is not to ban the churro lady but to reform the health regime with a bias toward creating more economic opportunity, not punishing it. Of the objections, I think only the public space concerns are valid, which I think is solvable if, again, the orientation of the city is toward creating opportunity—that is, fundamentally, what cities are about. Embracing that mental shift is what it will take for NY to become a City of Yes.
How do people in developing countries manage to live, save money and start businesses when their income is a few hundred (or even a few dozen) dollars a month? How did currently rich countries get rich?
By slowing building things up, without bells and whistles, and regulation on housing and commerce being either mininal or non-enforced.
I am currently seeing this firsthand in Hanoi, a city with more food stalls and home-based restaurants than cars (people use motorbikes instead)
Yep. The question, I guess, is how a "rich country" can keep that opportunity open for the people within it who aren't rich, but after "we" have grown out of that way of doing things...
As someone who is probably neurotic to a fault about food safety, I feel like you're missing an important element here. I'm with you on the policy-side of things, and admire the vibrancy that these sorts of vendors would bring to an urban core, but man, it skeeves me out a little from a sanitation perspective!
I hear you - I have two thoughts on that. One is that you can (probably) make the *permitting* side so easy as to be basically just checking a box, and have tighter regulations regarding the things that are actual food safety issues. The other is that restaurants are held to very strict standards, yet restaurant kitchens are often filthy and the inspection write-ups are often really awful. So I do wonder how much the regulations mean anything and how to make them mean something in a way that isn't like, inspect every restaurant every day.
That's fair--I haven't invested too much time into looking into restaurant cleanliness likely because if I did I would probably never eat out again, hahaha.
I like to think those soft pretzels I bought on the streets of Philadelphia built up my immune system. If I made a closer inspection of the vendors, I might never have bought one.
When I lived in New York, there were fruit and vegetable stands that sold fruits and vegetables from boxes placed just in front of the windows of the business under an awning. If you move those fruits those boxes 6 foot out into the sidewalk, it would be a sidewalk vending business. Difference?
I can actually speak to this issue from a position of expertise: I used to work for the city agency that regulated street vending. You're missing a lot of the problems unregulated street vending can pose. Some of those issues are noted elsewhere in the comments (health risks, mostly), but you're missing the difference between dirty restaurants (I read a lot of those reports, too) and dirty street vendors - a restaurateur makes significant investment, often off borrowed family money, in making sure that his restaurant stays in business. If he is found in violation of health codes often enough, he can lose his license, as well as his (or his family's) life savings. if the churro lady gets a violation, she is going to ignore the fine, because she never had a license to lose in the first place, and if a day's worth of product and her shopping cart get confiscated? It's not the end of the world for her. When entrepreneurs have significant skin in the game, they're more likely to follow the rules that protect their customers.
Also, it's not really zoning that prohibits street vendors (food or otherwise) from setting up shop on the sidewalk, or not strictly speaking. In a city as busy as NYC, all public space is at a premium, and there is significant competition for it. The city can dole out permits in places where there it deems there is enough room for a street vendor to set up shop, but not where it is so crowded that a cart will block pedestrian flow. Of course, vendors want to be where there is the most foot traffic, so there's where the friction arises, and when there's a traffic jam on the sidewalk, it's most likely because an illegally sited vendor has taken over the public way for his personal business.
Another issue, beyond crowding, is that there are some places we just don't want vendors everywhere. Parks, for example. The well-spread-out hot dog carts? Sure. But t-shirt vendors all over Sheep Meadow? Nope. And no one wants to be pestered on the subway by vendors, both because of crowding (looking at you, churro lady) and because in subway cars you become a captive market, unable to avoid the endless sales pitches. Even libertarians want a break from in-your-face commerce from time to time, no?
Oh yeah, I agree about the handbag guys for the most part and the stolen CVS stuff guys in DC. I guess I’m mostly talking about a lighter hand on food and small business in general.
My other point about the kei trucks (not made here but made in pieces about vehicles in particular) is not just that they’re cheap but that they’re *properly scaled for cities.* In other words, they’re not for joyriding on the interstate. The Europeans call their little cars “city cars.” American cars are “suburban cars” but nobody understands them in that way.
99% Invisible's latest podcast episode chronicles the "leaf blower wars" in Los Angeles. It's about the tension between elites/environmentalists who hate the noise/pollution and gardeners who rely on the machines to make their living. Though the episode doesn't frame it this way, it draws out a kind of NIMBYism against small-scale commerce. People want things to be pristine, but they don't want the noise—and they don't consider what the gardener will do when he doesn't have a huge time- and labor-saving device to work with anymore.
Related to the churro ladies, some of the other commenters bring up valid points: health concerns, unfairness toward brick-and-mortar restaurants that have to comply with all sorts of other rules and regs, rights of way and public access concerns. The health code regime in NY is another instance of its anti-small-business bias: it's capricious and cumbersome and serves mostly as a tax on restaurants, with marginal health and safety benefits but higher prices for consumers. The right move is not to ban the churro lady but to reform the health regime with a bias toward creating more economic opportunity, not punishing it. Of the objections, I think only the public space concerns are valid, which I think is solvable if, again, the orientation of the city is toward creating opportunity—that is, fundamentally, what cities are about. Embracing that mental shift is what it will take for NY to become a City of Yes.
How do people in developing countries manage to live, save money and start businesses when their income is a few hundred (or even a few dozen) dollars a month? How did currently rich countries get rich?
By slowing building things up, without bells and whistles, and regulation on housing and commerce being either mininal or non-enforced.
I am currently seeing this firsthand in Hanoi, a city with more food stalls and home-based restaurants than cars (people use motorbikes instead)
Yep. The question, I guess, is how a "rich country" can keep that opportunity open for the people within it who aren't rich, but after "we" have grown out of that way of doing things...
This book discusses street vending:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhh27
As someone who is probably neurotic to a fault about food safety, I feel like you're missing an important element here. I'm with you on the policy-side of things, and admire the vibrancy that these sorts of vendors would bring to an urban core, but man, it skeeves me out a little from a sanitation perspective!
I hear you - I have two thoughts on that. One is that you can (probably) make the *permitting* side so easy as to be basically just checking a box, and have tighter regulations regarding the things that are actual food safety issues. The other is that restaurants are held to very strict standards, yet restaurant kitchens are often filthy and the inspection write-ups are often really awful. So I do wonder how much the regulations mean anything and how to make them mean something in a way that isn't like, inspect every restaurant every day.
That's fair--I haven't invested too much time into looking into restaurant cleanliness likely because if I did I would probably never eat out again, hahaha.
I like to think those soft pretzels I bought on the streets of Philadelphia built up my immune system. If I made a closer inspection of the vendors, I might never have bought one.
Uhhhhh... okay
When I lived in New York, there were fruit and vegetable stands that sold fruits and vegetables from boxes placed just in front of the windows of the business under an awning. If you move those fruits those boxes 6 foot out into the sidewalk, it would be a sidewalk vending business. Difference?