The Informal City: Exploring the Variety of the Street Vending Economy

Lina Martínez and John Rennie Short
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Lina Martínez: Observatorio de Políticas Públicas (POLIS), Universidad Icesi, Cali 760031, Colombia
John Rennie Short: School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: Street vending is one of the most important economic activities of the informal sector. This paper highlights the diversity of street vending. We extend the previous analysis of the informal economy in one city, Cali, Colombia, with data on informal workers in two public spaces: Downtown and Santa Helena, and workers in the mass transit bus system. We show how the informal economy varies greatly within one city. Provided the lack of data in the study of the informal economy, most studies describe the dynamics of the informal sector as uniform across the urban space. In this analysis, we present evidence about the spatial segmentation and diversity of street vendors by their socioeconomic conditions, profits, and earnings. We further explore the spatial segmentation by analyzing the large indebtedness and financial exclusion of street vendors. We report that workers in the mass transit system are the most vulnerable and indebted and how the large indebtedness to illegal payday lenders is a major barrier for street vendors to move out of poverty. We conclude that it is important to understand the granularity of the urban informal economy in order to craft suitable public policies.

Keywords: informal economy; global south; street vending; Colombia; financial exclusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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