Street vending as an occupation has existed for hundreds of years (Bromley 2000) and is considered a cornerstone of many cities’ historical and cultural heritage.
The academic literature on street vending commonly treats street vendors broadly as those who sell goods or services in public space. This includes the full gamut of goods and services, traded on a wholesale or retail basis, in streets and other kinds of related public spaces – including sidewalks, alleyways, and medians. Street vendors may have fixed stalls such as kiosks, semi-fixed stalls like folding tables; they may operate from crates, collapsible stands, or wheeled pushcarts that are moved and stored overnight. Other vendors sell from fixed locations without a stall structure, displaying their merchandise on cloth/plastic sheets; mobile vendors walk or bicycle through the streets as they sell (International Labour Organization 2002).