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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Informal Urbanism: Legal Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and the Management of Street Vending in New York City Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/948005rd Author Devlin, Ryan Thomas Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Informal Urbanism: Legal Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and the Management of Street Vending in New York City. By Ryan Thomas Devlin A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in City and Regional Planning and the Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ananya Roy, Chair Professor Nezar Al Sayyad Professor Richard Walker Spring 2010 Abstract Informal Urbanism: Legal Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and the Management of Street Vending in New York City. by Ryan Thomas Devlin Doctor of Philosophy in City and Regional Planning Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Ananya Roy, Chair In New York City conflict over street vending has evolved over the years, reflecting the political, economic, and social context of particular eras. This dissertation is focused primarily on the current era of vending regulation in New York and, more broadly, is concerned with the ways in which urban subjects are managed and urban space administered under neoliberalism. In New York, rather than being regulated in a straightforward manner that is guided by formal laws, the practice of street vending is managed informally on the part of store owners, building managers, police officers, even vendors themselves. The key mechanism through which this informal management occurs is legal ambiguity and uncertainty created by complex and convoluted vending laws, which leave vendors open to harassment and intimidation, particularly in high- value, central areas of the city under the control of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). As vendors learn through experience the blocks or streets where they will receive the most harassment, they eventually police themselves, gravitating to parts of the city where property interests have less resources or influence to maintain effective control over vending. This produces a landscape of street vending where the spatial distribution of vendors is shaped less by actual laws, and is more of a reflection of the power, influence and resolve of individual property owners and property organizations such as BIDs. Through the case of street vending management, this study adds to our knowledge of spatial management in U.S. cities by showing the ways in which legal uncertainty and ambiguity can play a critical role in structuring space. For vendors, New York is not a city of clearly defined legal partitions or walls, but one of dispersed, shifting, and variegated regulations. The dispersed and variegated nature of vending management also opens up opportunities for challenges and contestation. Vendors, despite mostly lacking citizenship and formal voting rights, nevertheless use a variety of tactics and strategies to contest their current situation. Vendors’ political strategies focus heavily on demystifying vending regulations and holding the city and its enforcement agents accountable to the letter of the law. Where legal uncertainty and informal enforcement norms are some of the main tools used to control the spatiality of vending, clarifying murky regulations and demanding regularized enforcement, somewhat paradoxically, becomes a key strategy of resistance. 1 Table of Contents Prologue………………………………………………………………. ii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………… iv Introduction…………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One…………………………………………………………... 27 From Subjects in Need of Reform to Problems in need of Exclusion: Shifting Regimes of Vending Regulation in New York Chapter Two………………………………………………………….. 51 “The Vietnam of Municipal Issues”: Regulating Food Vending in Late 20th Century New York Chapter Three………………………………………………………… 78 “Colossal Public Policy Failure” or New Regime of Spatial Control? Informality and the Management of Street Vending in New York Chapter Four………………………………………………………….. 104 The Politics of Street Vending in New York City Epilogue………………………………………………………………. 134 Works Cited…………………………………………………………… 136 i Acknowledgements The project of writing a dissertation, though often solitary, is never a singular endeavor. There are countless people without whose contributions and support, the accomplishment of completing this dissertation would not have been possible. First, I would like to thank my committee, Ananya Roy, Nezar Al Sayyad, and Richard Walker for their comments, attention and insights. In particular, their first round of comments led to major revisions of the document—including a full rewrite of the introduction—that I feel have produced a conceptually clearer and more theoretically grounded dissertation. In particular, I would like to thank the chair of my committee, Ananya, for her continued enthusiastic support of my research and for encouraging me, from the very beginning, to think about my subject matter in a transnational sense—to look past arbitrary disciplinary and geographic boundaries when it came to informality, development, and the city. I would also like to thank her for all the extra time she dedicated for me and her other advisees, from hosting weekend dissertation working groups at her house to more informal discussions with groups of graduate students at the faculty club. She did not have to spend the extra time cultivating a community of scholars among her advisees, but in doing so, I feel she made my and all my colleagues’ work stronger. This scholarly community of doctoral students from across disciplines all interested in understanding and representing the city was crucially influential in the final form of this dissertation. At Berkeley, I had the opportunity to work with and learn from a diverse array scholars in city planning as well as architecture, geography, sociology, education studies, all sewn together by a particular interest in social justice and the city. My writing group partners, Genevieve, Sarah and Stefan all provided helpful insight and suggestions in our weekly meetings during the spring 2009 semester, not to mention the ability to commiserate about the trials and tribulations of the writing process. Also, reading their excellent work every week, concerning topics very different from my own, was a welcome break from the drone of my subject matter. I would also like to thank Professor Sabrina Soracco for helping to organize and moderate our writing group sessions. Of course, none of this dissertation would have been possible if not for the insight and cooperation from my research subjects in the field. I owe deep gratitude to the countless street vendors who took the time to speak with me about their experiences, whether it was a quick discussion at their carts, or lengthy ones in coffee shops, cafes or city parks. I developed a deep admiration for many of them, and I can only hope that my words in this dissertation in some way help to improve their condition, if by no other means than to at least tell their stories and make public their struggle. Without the help and guidance of Sean Basinski at the Urban Justice Center’s Street Vendor Project, this dissertation would likely never have gotten off the ground. For some reason, he decided to take a young researcher from U.C. Berkeley under his wing back in the summer of 2005, when I began preliminary work for this study, and I am forever thankful to him for that. He taught me a great deal about street vending, how regulations work (or do not work) and pointed me in many helpful directions, whether it was people to speak with or issues to follow up on. In large part thanks to Sean, my “Ph.D. on street vending”, as he used to explain my work, is finally done. I also must thank everyone else at the Street Vendor Project, from interns to other staff, such as Ali and Judi, for their insight, ii comments, and help with this project. There were many busy people aside from vendors and their advocates who took time out of their schedule to speak with me about the issue, who I must also thank. Though we did not always see eye-to-eye on the vending issue, nearly all of the Business Improvement District personnel, city officials, politicians, and business advocates treated me with professionalism and respect, and provided critical insight to the street vending conflict in New York. For this, I am very thankful. I look back on my time at Berkeley with fondness, in no small part due to my collogues, who also became my close friends. Without them—Carmen, Sylvia, Stacey, Stefan, Hun, Jean Paul, Pedro, Pete, the other Ryan, Jason—the project of completing a dissertation would have been near impossible. I am deeply indebted to them, both for the intellectual contributions they made to my work through our discussions and debates, and for the relief they provided from the daily grind of doctoral studies. Thursday nights at the Graduate, Sunday Soup, marathon sessions at Becketts or Ben and Nick’s were all indispensable relief valves. I would like to especially thank Carmen, my writing partner, teammate, hypewoman. We happened to go through every step of the dissertation process in concert, from qualifying exams, to field work, to writing, to filing. Her support, and

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