Street vending and the use of urban spaces in Tongaat central business district KwaZulu-Natal.

Abstract

Urban public spaces are now used as livelihood assets for the urban poor in many cities around the world. Street vending is an urban livelihood that occurs in public spaces of the urban areas. And it is the means whereby the urban poor use urban public spaces for living and this result in conflict between street vendors and other urban users. It is on the grounds of this responsibility that this study examines street vending and the use on urban public spaces in the Tongaat Central Business District. This study has used a mixed method of both qualitative and quantitative, but qualitative methods being more dominant, including observation methods, interviews, and open ended and closed ended questions. The research is conducted from a feminist perspective. Both vendors and pedestrians were interviewed. The findings show that people continue to engage in street vending as a source of employment, with the majority of the interviewees having been engaged in this form of trading for more than 10 years. Vendors preferably want to sell in the CBD to be able to attract customers as it is the busiest area. This paper recommends that the spatial dynamics of the activity in the urban informal sector should be understood and the space needs of street vendors must be considered in urban planning. It is also recommended that the activity is accommodated sufficiently in the urban spatial environment and that the use of urban public space by street vendors is addressed in urban planning in order to minimize the conflicts between street vendors and other urban users.