Street vending and urban public space

Abstract

Street vending is a worldwide phenomenon, found in all countries and it has been practicing in different ways. Street vendor as a person who offers goods or services for sale to the public without having a permanent built up structure. Urban Public Space has historically been described as "open space", meaning the streets, parks and recreation areas, plazas and other publicly owned and managed outdoor spaces, as opposed to the private domain of housing and work (Tonnelat:2010:1).This study is concentrated on Beltola Market which is one of the oldest market in Guwahati city of Assam where Street Vendors undertaken their everyday business and provided services to the large number of people through access urban public space.The Socio-Demographic status of street vendors identified that majority constituted of male against female vendors. Majority of the respondents revealed that they have allotted space for vending whereas few of them do not have proper vending space in the market.71 per cent respondents have permanent space and rest of vendors have occupied temporary space. It was observed through filed study that vending space is very congested and vendors often faced infrastructure related issues, such as parking, waste management, and congestion.