Downgraded by Upgrading: Small-scale Traders, Urban Transformation and Spatial Reconfiguration in Post-reform Vietnam

Abstract

This article examines some of the ruptures and contestations that have emerged in the context of urban restructuring and market redevelopment policies in Hanoi, Vietnam. Public markets have become sites of contestation and struggle over the commoditization and use of public urban space: large plots of state-owned real estate in the inner city are handed over to private investment companies for development, in the process of which small-scale traders are losing their means of economic survival in the marketplace. These forms of accumulation by dispossession likewise reflect processes of social and spatial reconfiguration that exclude the urban poor and other 'uncivilized' subjects from public visibility by creating up-scaled spaces of lifestyle and consumption for the newly emerging classes of high-end consumers. Such processes of dispossession are gendered and impact on different kinds of traders in different ways.

Street markets, urban development and immigrant entrepreneurship: Unpacking precarity in Moore Street, Dublin

“…The street market is declining, this is hardly a market street anymore.' The precarity of livelihood building activity in the area is a direct result of neglect by the relevant authorities, in line with much of the literature on revanchist urbanism and street and marketplace traders (Endres, 2014;Gonzalez and Waley, 2013;Mackie et al, 2014;Turner and Schoenberger, 2012). This daily lived experience of anti-social behaviour adds a further layer of precarity stemming from being constantly at the risk of violence, or what Ettlinger (2007: 321) calls the 'unpredictability of terror', while the complete absence of police response to traders' requests for assistance in this context represents yet another form of vulnerability and disinvestment.…”

Grow at home, buy local: (De)commodifying 'rural' vegetables and herbs

“…The 'Decision of the Prime Minister Approving the Program on the Development of Marketplaces until 2010' promulgates the upgrading of marketplaces in urban areas and the construction of supermarkets (Gerber et al, 2014). Big markets that had been the economic center of the city for centuries were torn down, making space for new large-scale developments such as supermarkets and shopping malls (Endres, 2014;Geertman, 2011). Most of the old markets occupied urban land of high economic value.…”

Governing urban informality: re-working spaces and subjects in Kampala, Uganda

“…In many contexts, there is a renewed focus on law enforcement and evictions from strategic spaces including city centres have increased, with significant negative effects on vendors' incomes (Roever and Skinner, 2016). In some cases, the removal of 'undesirables' in connection with central city regeneration takes the seemingly more benevolent form of relocation of street vendors into markets (Bromley and Mackie, 2009;Lindell and Ihalainen, 2014;Morange, 2015;Spire and Choplin, 2018;Endres, 2014). However, vendors may respond to attempts to control or exclude them by increasing their mobility, reoccupying or creating new vending sites, drawing upon social networks or using associational power (Crossa, 2009;Bromley and Mackie, 2009;Steel et al, 2014;Cuvi, 2016).…”