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In the name of history: (De)Legitimising street vendors in New York and Rome

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan Thomas Devlin

    (Pratt Institute, USA)

  • Francesca Piazzoni

    (University of Liverpool, UK)

Abstract

Policy makers across the Global North tend to remove poor and non-white vendors as inappropriate users of public space. Scholars have amply demonstrated that such removals reflect dominant aspirations of the present and future image of the city. But how do ideas about a city’s past help shape these aspirations? We compare how heritage, the socially constructed meanings through which people experience history, helps forge consensus over the legitimacy of vendors in Rome and New York. Vending has long allowed oppressed people to survive in both cities. These similar histories translate today into diverging attitudes. In Rome, a city branded as a site of (white) glory, authorities banish both long-standing Jewish vendors and newly arrived immigrants. In New York, mythicised as a place of success for immigrants, policy makers cannot always displace vendors who claim historical legitimacy. We explain these different conditions through a regimes of heritage framework. Using archival and ethnographic data, we examine whose voices count more in constructing each city’s past, what stories are told, and how these stories imbricate with existing political structures. Regimes of heritage, we find, help spatialise neoliberalism, differentiated citizenship, and authenticity. These dynamics highlight heritage as a critical, if underexplored agent of urban oppression and resistance.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan Thomas Devlin & Francesca Piazzoni, 2023. "In the name of history: (De)Legitimising street vendors in New York and Rome," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(1), pages 109-125, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:60:y:2023:i:1:p:109-125
    DOI: 10.1177/00420980221088126
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ryan Thomas Devlin, 2018. "Global Best Practice or Regulating Fiction? Street Vending, Zero Tolerance and Conflicts Over Public Space in New York, 1980–2000," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 517-532, May.
    2. Jennifer Robinson, 2011. "Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 1-23, January.
    3. Gengzhi Huang & Desheng Xue & Yang Wang, 2019. "Governmentality and Spatial Strategies: Towards Formalization of Street Vendors in Guangzhou, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 442-459, May.
    4. Veronica Crossa, 2009. "Resisting the Entrepreneurial City: Street Vendors' Struggle in Mexico City's Historic Center," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(1), pages 43-63, March.
    5. Avi Astor, 2019. "Street Performance, Public Space, and the Boundaries of Urban Desirability: The Case of Living Statues in Barcelona," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(6), pages 1064-1084, November.
    6. Matthew Hayes, 2020. "The coloniality of UNESCO’s heritage urban landscapes: Heritage process and transnational gentrification in Cuenca, Ecuador," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(15), pages 3060-3077, November.
    7. Andrea Roberts & Grace Kelly, 2019. "Remixing as Praxis," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 85(3), pages 301-320, July.
    8. Mojgan Taheri Tafti, 2020. "Assembling street vending," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(9), pages 1887-1902, July.
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