Thesis (MPA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2017 / The concept street vending based on the literature review revealed that it is regarded as an informal sector industry that is dominated by women. This sector is largely operated by street vendors with low skill sets and minimal education. In Africa, street vending is noticeable amongst the people who are unemployed. The Polokwane Municipality Street Vending By-Laws allow every person an opportunity to become a street vendor. The purpose of research was to investigate if the implementation of the Polokwane Street Vending By-Laws was effective in promoting a healthy and safe environment in which vendors operate. Amongst other objectives, the researcher wanted to provide possible solutions to the challenges that may be faced by the Municipality in making the implementation of by-laws effective. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. The data collected from street vendors operating in Devenish Street and officials of Polokwane Local Economic Development and Tourism Unit was presented and analysed. This study concludes by conferring the recommendations, conclusions and final remarks which were cautiously deduced from analysis of findings and the whole study. This followed by proposal that reflected the importance of bench marking with growing and metro cities for best practises in connection with effective implementation of local municipality street vending by-laws.

This thesis aims to describe in depth the Network of Provision Services to Public Space Users (REDEP), which is a new formalization program for street vendors in Bogota. The development of this study contributes to the research about street vending policies in Bogota, which have been studied little by the academy. To achieve a depth description of this program, this study approached three important aspects of the REDEP: the rationale behind its creation, its legitimation and its outcomes. In order to do this, this thesis has used Foucault’s concept of Discipline and the policy approach Aestheticization of Poverty described by Roy. In addition, Bogota’s street vending policies between 1990 and 2005 has been analyzed. Finally, 22 vendors working in REDEP’s kiosks and two officials working in REDEP’s management were interviewed. This thesis concludes that the creation of the REDEP has as main cause the negative perception of peddlers as threatening population to development of the Bogota as a “democratic” and ”equalitarian” city. Like other formalization initiatives, the program has aimed to formalize and discipline street vendors through the construction of kiosks and points of sale. REDEP’s outcomes according to vendor’s perceptions have not been completely positive in aspects like sales, working conditions and levels of participation.

Concern for children’s safety and protection has become a global issue and has evoked considerable debate since the publication of the United Nations’ widely ratified Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989. A dominant theme within this charter and within the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990) is the recognition that children are individuals with rights that need to be respected and protected. More specifically, Article 32 of the UNCRC states that children should be protected from ‘economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development’. Nigeria has signed and ratified both the UNCRC and the African Charter and has committed itself to ensuring the welfare and protection of its children. This thesis examines children’s work experiences and their interpretations of these against the backdrop of the provisions of the UNCRC and the African charter. The study sets out to explore the meanings of work for itinerant street vending children and young people in Enugu, Nigeria and is based on a combined ethnographic methodology of participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 24 child vendors in marketplaces over a period of six months. It will be argued that contemporary ideas about children’s work are framed by Euro-centric, adult perceptions and definitions of what they think working children are doing, and that the imposition of Western constructions of childhood does not reflect the lived realities of children. Discussions with children revealed, among other things, a contradiction and ambivalence in their understandings of work in relation to vending and an interplay of complex environmental, cultural and poverty factors. In children’s views, taking responsibilities in activities that add positive values to their personal development and to the continued survival of their families was part of their childhood. Whilst street based observations of the markets revealed some fundamental dangers and problems with street vending, especially the reality of physical, social and emotional abuse, these young children have developed robust coping mechanisms and social networks which reflect a blend of definitional adjustments, rationalisation and social bonding and which reveal inadequacies in the enforcement of child protection policies. The tension between these risks and the importance of vending in the lives of the children is discussed. The role and type of work are further examined against dominant cultural values and socio economic realities in Nigeria in an attempt to fully explain the phenomenon of children’s work in this milieu. This study concludes that children’s participation in vending, while at times both ‘hazardous’ and ‘harmful’, is a fact of life and a way of life for children growing up in Nigeria, an integral part of their childhood activity, and a realistic preparation for their future lives and careers. It is argued that this raises important challenges not only to the children’s rights agenda, but also to social welfare agencies which seek to provide support to children and young people in developing countries such as Nigeria.

This thesis examines how the agency of informal vendors in Kampala, Uganda, is shaped by the state. It argues that efforts by the President and the NRM to monopolize political power have dramatically restricted the agency of informal street and market vendors, forcing them to adapt to changing political circumstances in ways that have limited their ability to participate in urban development and economic life. This argument is presented through two examples of how expanding political control has led to a contraction of vendors’ agency. The first of these describes how the early decentralization and democratization reforms introduced by the NRM allowed street vendors to take advantage of competition between newly elected and empowered politicians to remain on the city’s streets, and how the central government’s subsequent recentralization and de-democratization of political power in Kampala has led to the repression of street vending while closing the channels of influence that vendors previously enjoyed. The second explores how efforts by the central government to undermine the opposition-led local government allowed market vendors to successfully oppose an unpopular market privatization initiative, and how both the President and the new city government have since been able to take advantage of disputes within markets for their own purposes while vendors have been largely unable to realize their market management and development ambitions. Both examples detail the causes, forms and implications of the ruling party’s monopolization of political power and explore how vendors have responded to their changing political circumstances, highlighting how these efforts face significant obstacles due to the increasingly restrictive environment in which vendors are forced to act. This thesis shows that the agency of informal vendors—while always manifest in certain ways—is constantly and increasingly constrained as the President and the ruling party tighten their grip on power. As their political exclusion precipitates a broader exclusion from urban development and economic life, informal vendors are forced to contend with a situation of increasing marginalization and vulnerability that they are largely unable to improve.

Since China's shift to market socialism, many marginalized by this process work as informal street vendors where they reappropriate public space in order to survive―a practice at odds with urban authorities' modernizing agenda. In relation to these competing logics concerning public space's use value versus its exchange value, this dissertation examines the practices, experiences, and agency of informal street vendors working in Sanjingwuwei, an ordinary, yet rapidly gentrifying, neighborhood of Nanchang, capital and largest city of southeastern China's Jiangxi Province. After describing the growth of an informal economy in modern China and providing a history of street vending, I describe the everyday practices of vendors and their reappropriation of public space in Nanchang and the Sanjingwuwei neighborhood. I then provide the socio-demographic details of Sanjingwuwei’s vendors and use their voices to demonstrate how city image protection, a burgeoning informal sector, and the globalization of urban space bring challenges to their already precarious work in the streets. The dissertation concludes by linking the practices and agency of Nanchang’s vendors into a theoretical discussion concerning the agency of informal street workers. Despite daily attempts by the local state to remove them, this study shows how Nanchang's street vendors, continue to actively engaging in alternative forms of urban space-making through reappropriating of public space. Therefore, this dissertation shows how vendors challenge the city as a system by downscaling, slowing down, decommodifying, and ultimately, deglobalizing urban space to neighborhood-level through their reappropriation of public space.

Why do governments tolerate the violation of their own laws and regulations, and when do they enforce them? Conventional wisdom is that state weakness erodes enforcement, particularly in the developing world. In contrast, I highlight the understudied political costs of enforcement. Governments choose not to enforce state laws and regulations that the poor tend to violate, a behavior that I call forbearance, when it is in their electoral interest. / Government

City managers and planners in the global South, particularly in African cities are confronted with an unprecedented urbanisation fraught with complexities such as urban sprawl, jobless growth, and informality. Urban planning practice in Ghana has retained colonial legacies that outlaw informality, be it economic, such as, street trading or housing, such as, slums. This has led to the marginalisation of the urban poor, who make up the majority of urban dwellers. Consequently, the masses invent ways to survive in the city and thus reshape the materiality of urban spaces. Most planners and state officials consider the activities of street vendors as a nuisance that mar the beauty of our cities. For this reason, 24% of the Ghanaian labour force who work on the streets are targets of misaligned and officious controls that include but are not limited to evictions. However, when evicted, most generally return to the streets. Building on existing work on urban planning in the global South and feeding into Southern urban theory, the research focuses explicitly on the Accra Mall Enclave (AME) as a microcosm of African cities. It explores how various players – planners/vendors/politicians – interact and navigate the dynamics of daily experiences. The research asks, how are planners navigating the tensions between planning regulations and the reality of street trading around the Accra Mall Enclave (AME)? What are street traders' logics, strategies, and experiences? How are vendors negotiating their interactions with state actors such as police, planners, city guards, toll collectors, etc.? The questions were answered through qualitative research methods; field observations, interviews, and a review of planning regulations and policies. The results of the study contribute to our understanding of how cities are being built in Africa, particularly Accra, Ghana. As a case study, the focus on the AME assisted in exposing the role of planners in this mode of urbanisation, while also uncovering meaning associated with space and place. Findings show that the state is reluctantly, if not unwillingly, coming to terms with vending within the AME. This could however change quickly if politics change, so still precarious. There are no viable alternatives to relocation, and vendors have established significant relationships and tactics that somehow entrench their position howbeit insecure. Besides all these, state officials, when acting in their individual capacity side with the vending profession because the state has not created jobs. Despite this personal understanding, the system, specifically state bureaucracy, generates obstacles, and as a result existing state structures frustrate the planning practice. This is complicated further by politics. Hence, planners themselves feel helpless, marginalised, and trapped. Further, spatial plans do not adequately provide access to the land needed by informal sector actors. The state resorts to occasional evictions when there is an adequate budget for this action. Imaginations of world class cityness dominate perceptions of the space. This is a candid depiction of the do-nothing scenario – the active contribution of the state in the creation of informality within the AME and the city of Accra, Ghana.

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L'action publique locale dans les métropoles. Le cas de la gestion du commerce de rue à Mexico et Lima. Alors que la gouvernance métropolitaine fait l'objet de nombreux travaux en sciences sociales, les gouvernements locaux infra-métropolitains sont moins étudiés. Or, ils continuent d'être les acteurs principaux de la régulation des espaces urbains. Ils agissent de manière autonome sur leur territoire tout en étant dans une situation d'inter-territorialité spécifique au milieu urbain. L'analyse comparative de la gestion du commerce de rue à Mexico et Lima montre la mise en œuvre de l'action publique dans les territoires administratifs des métropoles. Elle distingue les centres historiques - vitrines et laboratoires des autorités régionales - des territoires municipaux où les politiques oscillent entre imitation, innovation et inertie. De plus, elle révèle une palette de processus et interactions horizontales et verticales entre les actions publiques des différentes autorités, alimentant le débat sur la fragmentation urbaine / Local public action in the metropolis. Case study of street vending policies in Mexico City and Lima. While metropolitan governance is the subject of much research in social sciences, local and infra-metropolitan governments have been studied less. However, they are still the main actors of urban space regulation. They act autonomously in their territories and are simultaneously in a situation of inter-territoriality specific to the urban environment. The comparative analysis of street vending policies in Mexico City and Lima displays the implementation of local public action in the administrative territories of the metropolis. It distinguishes historical centres –the showcases and laboratories of regional authorities– from municipal territories where the policies fluctuate between imitation, innovation and inertia. Likewise, the analysis contributes to the debate on urban fragmentation by revealing a range of horizontal and vertical interactions and processes between the public actions of the different authorities

Cinco hipóteses explicam a permanência do trabalho informal nos espaços públicos do Centro de São Paulo como ocupação precária e vulnerável: 1- Incapacidade estrutural do mercado de trabalho formal de absorção de mão-de-obra: informalidade como processo mundial e exceção permanente no formato do capitalismo brasileiro; 2- Desconhecimento do comércio informal de rua como produção do espaço urbano: modificação de atributos espaciais: valorização, competição, posse, etc.); 3- Exploração oportunista da clandestinidade dos trabalhadores na forma de corrupção e clientelismo; 4- Marketing urbano e Segregação Espacial: articulação entre as elites locais, Poder Público e agências multilaterais no intuito de promover a revitalização do perímetro estudado, expulsam ou isolam sistematicamente os trabalhadores de rua; 5- Inoperância das políticas públicas: o conhecimento insuficiente ou parcial do comércio de rua resulta na formulação de políticas públicas descoladas da realidade e, portanto, inoperantes. A partir dessas hipóteses,foi possível pensar parâmetros para políticas públicas que superem a polarização entre intolerância e permissividade em relação à atividade. / Five hypotheses explain streetvending in downtown Sao Paulo as a precarious and a vulnerable occupation: 1- Structural impermeability of formal labor market: informal sector as a global process, and as a permanent exception in brazilian capitalism; 2- Lack of awareness of streetvending as a production of urban space: transformation of spatial attributes - profit, competitiveness, ownership, etc.; 3- Opportunist exploitation over clandestine street vendors: corruption and patronage; 4- Urban marketing strategies and Spatial segregation: partnership among government, ruling elite and multi-lateral financial agencies in order to improve urban renewal, frequently isolate and gentrify against street vendors; 5- Innefective public policies - lack of understanding of streetvending results in unlikely public policies. Assuming these hypotheses, this research built public policies directions in order to overcome contradiction between intolerance and permissiveness.