Ms Oriard presented her research on integration of street vendors in city planning describing the case of Bhadra Plaza, Ahmedabad. Ms Oriard is a PhD candidate at Development Planning Unit, Bartlett School of Architecture, London; she did MSc in urban and regional planning and has been working as senior planner in Paris since 2006.
Ahmedabad has been recently ranked as the 3rd fastest growing city by Forbes Lists. The local government has undertaken many ambitious projects like the Sabarmati Riverfront project and Bus Rapid Transit System and requalification projects like the Kankaria Lake and Bhadra Plaza to uplift the city’s real estate and attract foreign investments by promoting a global image of the city. But the challenge is not only redefining the city’s look and ambiance but also accommodating contradictory needs. As quoted by Ms Oriard Ahmedabad’s current dilemma is to ‘promote the city’s image to develop market and simultaneously accommodate the needs of the urban poor’. Street vending is an ecosystem by itself, providing employment and essential commodities at affordable prices, indeed it has been an intemperate activity since decades. After decades of struggle their right to the street has been recently recognized by the Street Vendors Bill – 2014.
The Street Vendors Bill is a big step forward in recognizing the rights of street vendors not only to get space but also to participate in the decisions about the city thus creating a co-existing capitalist ecosystem by integrating street vendors in the city’s social and economic life.
The National policy of 2009 considers important tools to integrate the street vendors to the cities. Firstly, it recommends the formation of a Town Vending Committee (TVC) formed by representatives of the street vendors, the City Commissioner and different experts such as sociologists and planners. The objective of the TVC is to integrate vendors to the city not only by giving them ‘a sitting place’ but to integrate their interests and give them power to discuss city decisions. Secondly, it recommends a classification of the streets in three different zones: red, amber and green. Red is for ‘non-vending’ zones, amber for ‘vending-with-restrictions’ zones and green for ‘vending zones’.
From a normative point of view, the Street Vendors Bill (2014) and the National Policy on Street Vendors (2009) propose an ‘integration’ of the street vendors which goes beyond the ‘allocation of space’ and upgrade vendors to city deciders through the TVC. However, the implementation of this policy at City level tells another story, partly because territories are arenas of contradictory interests among different stakeholders, with different power to decide about the ‘form’ of the City.
Ahmedabad has approximately 67,000 street vendors and has ‘been classified among the cities with most street vendors in India’. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has developed the Street Vendors Scheme in 2009 following the guidelines proposed by the National policy (2009). The challenge for AMC has been to define general rules that set city scale principles, while at the same time develop planning tools that respond to the specific needs of the vendors at specific locations.
Project slogan for the Bhadra Plaza project: “Getting the City to the people” says it all. AMC plans to accommodate maximum vendors along with space for pedestrians and recreational activities. The Bhadra Plaza has been a hub for vendors since decades because of its prominent location and easy accessibility. Earlier there were approximately twelve hundred vendors within the Bhadra vicinity and a total of approximately three thousand in the Bhadra and Manek-Chowk area but with the renovated plaza AMC plans to give space to approximately six hundred and relocate the rest in the riverfront area. The vendors have organized groups selling similar commodities and supported by either some NGO, religion, political party or mutual alliance; the vending spaces are organized and mutually distributed among these groups. Most of these are family businesses and not all have licenses which is mandatory to be accounted for re-allocation after renovation. The vendors need to get registered with a fee of INR 100 but some vendors are still not interested as they think they have the right to the space since they have been vending for many years and do not realize squatting is a serious offence. AMC announced that after renovation spaces will be allocated to vendors randomly within respective commodity areas while during renovation, to facilitate their livelihood, AMC has given allowance to occupy spaces on their own in nearby areas. Street vendors are not liable for any compensation as most vendors are not registered.
But the issue does not end with just providing spaces, there are other issues which may occur later, like the upliftment of the Plaza to global standards could change the clientele arriving in Marutis to chauffer driven sedans. The question that may arise is:
“Are the stakeholders prepared to move to the next level of entrepreneurship?”
One important question that Ms Oriard addressed is the future of the nearby streets, presently occupied by the street vendors while the plaza is under construction. It is possible that the displaced and the new street vendors try to keep these streets as a permanent market location. The actual integration of the street vendors within the area needs comprehension of the moving patterns of the street vendors within the area, and not only within the perimeter of the plaza.
As the Bhadra Plaza belongs to a wider market structure, planning should account for the entire sector not just the plaza. But whatever the scenario maybe Ms Oriard concludes that India is taking important steps to integrate street vendors though there are some aspects in which the policy can be improved, especially in the implementation phase.
From her research and experience Ms Oriard concludes that street vendors require not only space but also integration of their logic:
‘A street market works under a commercial logic, it requires good accessibility to the area, places to store the goods, commercial coherence among the markets and the place.
Design and planning can play an important role in enhancing the commercial potential of the streets, while regulating the increase of economic value of ‘sitting places’ that the activity implies’.
Planning should include a commercial, social and political perspective to understand how different groups operate in the area and the kind of spatial structures that they form; i.e. with the shop keepers, with local community, etc. This requires a wider understanding of the Bhadra plaza in relation to an extended territory occupied by the City market. This perspective is necessary to make previsions for the evolution of the entire area.
Ms Oriard also emphasizes the need to develop new conceptual tools that consider street vendors, not only as social and political groups, but also as city actors able to give ‘commercial form’ and ‘monetary value’ to the areas they occupy to sell. Planner’s role should not be reduced to merely designing floor plan, and allocating spaces, but could be extended to a more holistic perspective for the city.
This article was originally published on CEPT Portfolio.
Header Image Source: Flickr user Mirza Ferdous Alam
Savvy Munshi 