Effects of Street Vending on the Lives of Vendors and on Urban Space

Abstract

The heavy influx of migrants is not fully integrated to formal economy leading towards a situation where a large number of people are forced to earn through informal sector. Street vending has been found increasing and has impacted positively on people’s livelihoods in urban areas, like Kathmandu. Lack of allocation of space, however, has caused the people involved in informal sector to occupy public spaces thereby laying both positive and negative effects on the urban space. In this context, the present study explores how street vending intervenes with the urban space. Urban Space in this sense has been dealt with in reference to Kelvin Lynch who argues that people in urban situations orient themselves by means of mental maps consisting of five elements; (1) paths: routes along which people move throughout the city; (2) edges: boundaries and breaks in continuity; (3) districts: areas characterized by common characteristics; (4) nodes: strategic focus points for orientation like squares and junctions; and (5) landmarks: external points of orientation, usually a easily identifiable physical object in the urban landscape. Although Kelvin Lynch’s elements of mental maps is about how people in urban situations orient themselves in urban situations and about imageability, this study actually perceives those spaces rather physically. Thus, this research attempts to study the positive and negative effects on the above listed elements of the city image. Also, it deals with the positive and negative effects on the livelihood aspects of street vendors.