No Place for Street Vending: Global Capital and Local Exclusion in Flushing, Queens, New York City

Keywords: Street Vending, Public Space, Gentrification, Chinatowns
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Thursday
Session Start / End Time: 4/8/2021 09:35 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/8/2021 10:50 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 38

Abstract

Downtown Flushing, an East Asian business district in the New York City borough of Queens, is experiencing a development boom, as offshore capital is helping to restructure the physical and social character of the neighborhood. As new hotels, malls, and offices rise, property interests and local politicians are seeking to position Flushing an upscale international business and shopping destination. Caught in the crosshairs of this plan are the neighborhood’s street vendors. New York City Council passed a law in October 2018 banning vendors Flushing’s sidewalks during peak business hours. The law went into effect in April 2019. Flushing’s vendors, many of them selling Chinese street food, were a key part of Flushing’s image as a working-class Chinese neighborhood and food destination, but they conflicted with the new visions for the district being promoted by business and political leaders.

Working in close collaboration with the Street Vendor Project, a vendor advocacy organization in New York, and using a variety of methods including surveys in public space, in-depth interviews with vendors and small business owners, discourse analysis of media and public records, as well as quantitative sidewalk load analysis, this study seeks to better understand the political and economic dynamics underlying the push to ban vendors, the role of planning and policy in legitimizing this exclusion, and the effects of this ban on vendors themselves.