Paper short abstract:

Urban authorities increasingly tackle the growing number of street vendors by relocating them into designated markets. The paper examines the outcomes of such a relocation in Nairobi and vendors’ subversive spatial practices, which challenge their confinement and disrupt dominant city visions.

Paper long abstract:

Making a living in African cities increasingly requires engagement in informal income activities such as street vending. In the pursuit of their livelihoods, informal actors fundamentally transform cityscapes in ways that deviate from Western inspired models of urbanism and planning rationalities. Such models and rationalities are often instrumental for local elites, driven by economic and political imperatives. Street workers are often seen as a source of disorder, as dangerous and ungovernable. Urban authorities in many cities therefore attempt to re-establish 'order' and tackle the expanding crowds of street vendors by removing them from the streets and relocating them into designated markets. This paper examines the process of relocation into a hawkers' market in central Nairobi, justified by the authorities through a rhetorical developmental aim of enhancing the business opportunities of vendors through the provision of hawkers' markets. While the market was apparently planned in line with the stated aim, the outcomes would turn out to be very different for many of the relocated. The paper examines the consequences of the relocation for the livelihoods of the vendors and well as their responses. Through transgressive spatial practices, the vendors came to gradually re-occupy unauthorized spaces. Such subversive practices of space-making could be seen as a form of resistance that potentially disrupts dominant city visions and destabilizes urban planning practices that address street vending through strategies of confinement.