Street Vending, Global Capital, and Local Exclusion in an Immigrant Neighborhood

9:30AM, Room 015

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.

In this panel members of the research team will present some initial findings from surveys and interviews. Ryan Thomas Devlin (Columbia University) will discuss findings of the project itself, while Sarah Orleans Reed (WIEGO) will relate findings to vendor conflicts globally, and Vicky Mao (Street Vendor Project) will discuss legal and political aspects of organizing vendors in Flushing. Yuan Zhou Liu, a vendor in Flushing who was affected by the ban, will also join the panel to share his experience of exclusionary laws.

Street Vending: Text

Panel organizers

Ryan Thomas Devlin

Ryan Thomas Devlin is a Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. His research focuses on informal urbanism in the United States, with a specific interest in street vending and conflicts over public space in New York City. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia, Ryan taught in the public and urban policy masters programs at both John Jay College (CUNY) and the New School. Ryan holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sarah Orleans Reed

Sarah Orleans Reed is a Research Associate with Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) and a staff member of the Street Vendor Project. She was previously WIEGO's Bangkok Focal City Coordinator, where she supported informal worker organizations via research related to street vending and public space, street food consumption, and access to urban services. Before joining WIEGO, her research focused on urbanization and climate change in Southeast Asia with the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and other non-governmental organizations.

Vicky Mao

Vicky Mao is a staff member and lawyer with the Street Vendor Project where she helps to organize and assist street vendors, with a specific focus on Mandarin-speaking members. She was born and raised in Hefei, China. A passion for law and social justice led her to pursue a J.D. at New York Law School after receiving her M.A from New York University. As an immigrant herself, Vicky is committed to help immigrant vendors with all kinds of needs.

Yuan Zhou Liu

Yuan Zhou Liu's BBQ cart is one of the best reviewed street carts in Flushing on Yelp. He has been selling Western Chinese-style grilled meat skewers in Flushing for eight years. His popular and thriving small business is now in jeopardy, thanks to the ban on street vendors in Downtown Flushing passed by New York City Council in October 2018 and implemented in April 2019.

Street Vending: List