Pros And Cons Of Street Vending

This essay will discuss illegal street vending in Los Angeles and how ethnographic data can shed new light on the reality of street vending and the laws prohibiting it. Los Angeles is the last of the USA’s major cities to still prohibit street vending, despite the prevalence of street vending on its streets (Vallianatos 2014). Street vending is prohibited under Los Angeles Municipal Code 42.00(b), and although some street vending is legal, such as licensed gourmet food trucks, this essay will focus on the largely impoverished group of vendors who operate without a permit and usually sell products from portable shopping carts (Bhimji 2010; 470). Illegal street vending is a $504 million industry, and is part of the larger informal economy in
They argue that because vendors don’t pay taxes and other legal expenses they can outprice the stores (Kettles 2004: 27). Many are also weary of the health risks that the vendors could potentially pose to the public, since they do not operate under any health and safety regulations (Granda 2015). Many also argue that street vending will lead to what Hardin coined the, “tragedy of the commons”, which refers to his theory that the freedom for individuals to act economically rational in a shared communal area leads to the ruin of that area (Kettle 2004: 3; Hardin 1994: 1244). Critics even argue that the prevalence of street vending can be linked to increased crime and in neighborhoods where vending is popular (Kettles 2004: 35). Some even view it as detrimental and antithetical to traditional American values and notions of modernity, as many see street vending to be premodern and associated with developing countries (Estrada and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2010: 2; Cross 2000:
Firstly, considering the claim that street vendors pose as unfair competition, there is evidence suggesting that the vendors actively try to avoid competing with stores presence of street vendors can be economically beneficial for an area. Ethnographic evidence shows that the vendors attempt to be good neighbors to the stores (Lui, Burns and Flaming 2015: 6). They try to respect the wishes of the stores, for example vendors who sold jewelry never sold in front of a jewelry store, and in general they attempt to avoid head to head competition (Kettles 2004: 24). Street vendors, because of their high visibility, also attract a lot of foot traffic that stores can benefit from (Lui, Burns and Flaming 2015: 12). In fact it has been shown that local economies can even suffer when street vending is removed (Kettles 2004: 31). Secondly, the argument that food vendors pose a health risk to the public is a distorted argument as there is no reason that vendors should be any more of a hazard than a restaurant for instance(ibid: 39). Rosales (2013: 711), found that fruit vendors attempt to produce hygienic environments but due to the extremely high rental rates of sanitary commissary areas, they were often forced to prepare their fruit in imperfect conditions, such as in their backyard. It is not in the