Street Vending Governance: Comparative Insights from Mexico City and San Francisco

How does street vending governance differ between Mexico City and San Francisco? In this article, I compare the regulatory and political frameworks of Mexico City and San Francisco to scrutinize the intricate relationships between multiple scales of government, non-governmental organizations, street vendors, and criminal groups. Through in-depth interviews, I systematically examine how these multiple power players strategically negotiate over public space. Moving away from traditional comparative analysis from area studies, through critical comparative research I delineate the differences in regulations between a metropolitan area from the global south with ubiquitous vending (Mexico City) and a spatially delimited city in the global north with scarce vending (San Francisco). Through these analyses, I depict the power dynamics within cities and neighborhoods, exemplifying that despite profound electoral, organizational, and enforcement differences in terms of street vending, urban space is negotiated in similar ways between both cities, strategically allowing or impeding street vendors to work in public space. Although cities in the global north have seldom paid attention to street vending’s regulatory frameworks, increasing urbanization and the shift in employment structures will continue to push people into street economies, making it crucial for cities of the global north to learn from cities in the south, anticipating the social and political consequences of widespread street vending.