What is Sidewalk Economy?

as portrayed in a 2020 article from the Vietnamese e-magazine – Vnexpress, is facing many obstacles and challenges despite its convenience and distinctive facts, mainly because its affect on the city urban planning, which occurs to be true, for example many city-dwellers realize they do not have the time to browse in supermarkets and find it more convenient to purchase what they need from the vendors that roam the streets and sidewalks 8. On the other hand, thanks to the rapid development in ecocomy by 2000s, which has been addressed strongly by Dapice, Gomez-Ibanez, & Nguyen that HCMC has transformed into a potential land for investors and developers. However, this also created a gap in social ladder, which pushed the people, mostly working class, who were unable to afford living in the center, to move to others sub-urban but at the same time are obliged to make their living in the streets.9 Besides, it seems clear to me that whatever they do, Vietnamese clearly likes the idea of having leisure time outside of their house. It is common to see Vietnamese enjoy their evening time by sidewalk, pavement.10 To thoroughly understand the reasons, and to clarify this matter, it is necessary to dive deeply into the characteristics of Vietnamese culture, people's mindset, climate, and mixed-zoning environment. To Vietnamese, this way of commercial business term has been so common, it is argued that it is so embedded in the city culture, so familiar that it has turned into a new form of occupation, I will argue that it is so embedded in the city’s culture that it has been called “Sidewalk Culture”, even though we have little evidence on how the name was come up. Street culture is just what we call it because what is good on the sidewalk is called sidewalk culture, so there will be nothing else. A Vietnamese researcher, Dr.Nguyen Khac Thuan, claims that Vietnamese Sidewalk culture will never disappear. And if a new element come up, it will also be brought up on the street, and it will have a new cultural structure without having to give up the old one.11

8 What the future holds for Vietnam’s street vendors by VnExpress E-magazine <https://e.vnexpress.net/projects/sidewalk-economicswhat-the-future-holds-for-vietnam-s-ubiquitous-street-vendors-3565620/index.html>

9 David Dapice, Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez & Nguyen Xuan Thanh , Ho Chi Minh City: The Challenges of Growth. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: United Nations Development Programme, Havard Kennedy School, 2010, 6.

10 Lisa B. W. Drummon, Street Scenes: Practices of Public and Private Space in Urban Vietnam, 2000, 2383.

11 “Sidewalk culture’ in Vietnam will never be lost?”. Vietnammoi. Khai An. 13th June 2017. <https://vietnammoi.vn/van-hoa-via-he-oviet-nam-se-khong-bao-gio-mat-di-35344.htm>

Sidewalk Culture, according to Vietnam Architecture Magazine, was originated from the consequences of urbanization of agriculture-based country. On the other hand, "Sidewalk culture" has been investigated by domestic and foreign sociologists, and narratives have been surrounded around the discussions of Vietnamese city culture from history, activities happening on the sidewalks. Gradually the sidewalk has become an adjective meaning "informal" or "inauthentic", which are used to describe the properties of attached nouns in many cases.12 Therefore, it can be said that sidewalk culture is not an easy thing to detach from, while maintaining activities on the street in a reasonable way are considered to be a problem. Dang has studied how the urban divide has pushed the working classes out of the city centers and this reform is partly responsible for taking the sidewalk as an informal location for the working class to produce more economically. However, from the perspective of history, culture, and sociology, the form of street commerce took place in Vietnam in the previous centuries, in the 19th and 20th centuries (Figure 1) and it is also one of the typical cultural features of Vietnam for large and small urban areas, where people connect and interact with each other, especially in the day time. And after a period of formation and development, the sidewalk informality, sidewalk culture has become essential for people's lives in Vietnam up to the present time despite its limitation in studies and supportive data.13 Informality sector can be an interesting discussion if it was put into context of the world in 20th century, particularly in 1970s. According to Alsayyad’s paper on Urban Informality as A New Way of Life, the discussion was ultimately rooted in descriptions of the movement of labor to cities in the 1950s and '60s. Among the earliest to identify this trend, the discourse proposed a two sector model for understanding the new migration of people and the manner of their employment, which later Lloyd George Reynolds identified these groups as a state sector and a “trade-service” sector. He described the latter as a multitude of people whom one sees thronging the city streets, sidewalks and back alleys in the developing countries: the petty trader, street vendors, coolies, and porters, small artisans, messengers, barbers, shoe-shine boys, and personal servants.14

12 Sidewalk Commercial Econom: negotiation and Purpose. Kien Truc Vietnam Magazine<https://kientrucvietnam.org.vn/van-hoathuong-mai-via-he-thoai-thuan-va-muc-dich/>

13The Hien Dang, Street Life as the negotiation process: case study of Sidewalk Informal Economy in Ho Chi Minh City, IOP Publishi, 2018, 2.

14Nezar Alsayyad, Urban Informality as A New Way of Life, University of California, 2004, 10.