(Ebook) Economic Diversification and the Urban Image; Changing the Narrative on Street Vending by PhD Candidate MUHAMMAD K. BALARABE , PhD Candidate ABDULSALAM I. SHEMA , M.Sc. MARYAM AHMAD

(Ebook) Economic Diversification and the Urban Image; Changing the Narrative on Street Vending by PhD Candidate MUHAMMAD K. BALARABE , PhD Candidate ABDULSALAM I. SHEMA , M.Sc. MARYAM AHMAD

Street vending is a dynamic phenomenon of network of events, socio-economic and
cultural factors while remaining a narration of place. At the metropolitan level, the
narrative is negatively skewed towards street vending and its aesthetic reality,
contemporaneously exploring hostile environmental interventions within the informal
sector. This paper attempted to explore a counter-narrative asking; based on
aesthetic experience, can the “desired” urban image be achieved by allowing street
vendors proliferate in public spaces? This question was asked within the scope of the
political-economy of diversification in Nigeria. Mapping over google satellite images
over critical periods leading to demolitions and/or developments, this paper
documented the spatial distribution of vendors to determine the urban centres that
are hostile to vending activities and those that were not. The paper argued that,
around public spaces such as parks and sidewalks, the precarious nature of vending
activities lead to their diffidence in upgrades to stalls, tables and kiosks. With pictures
from spaces that appear to approve of street vending tacitly, a pattern of upgrades in
vending apparatus and kiosks were established. This paper proposes an integrative
model of passive, active and tacit support that is required to influence the discourse
of vending activities within the context of urban images produced in Nigerian. In
conclusion and using sing Gouverneur (2014) concepts of receptors and
transformers, this paper revealed that potential existing parks within a dense urban
area could serve as transformers, creating an urban image that defies that “out of
place” narrative associated with vendors.
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2019) 3(1), 52-61.
https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2018.4682