Thesis for Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies 2014 at The School of Design Strategies at PARSONS The New School for Design Graduate candidate and author: Cristina M Handal G In collaboration with the thesis team Everyday Urbanities: Andrew Tucker, Bonnie Netel, Gabrielle Andersen, Jessica Kisner, Jonathan Lapalme and Sabrina Dorsainvil, and in special collaboration with classmate and colleague Troy Andrew Hallisey Fall semester advisors: Beatriz Beckford and Quilian Riano Spring semester advisors: Miguel Robles-Durรกn and Miodrag Mitrasinovic
To our partner and inspiration Rafael Samanaez, director of VAMOS Unidos, street food vendor and fighter for justice: gracias por confiar en nosotros, por contarnos las tremendas realidades de la venta ambulante, gracias por tu tiempo y por tu amistad. Que este solo sea el comienzo de una alcanzable visión. To our advisors Beatriz, Miguel, Miodrag and Quilian: thank you for challenging us, for motivating us, for teaching us what you know and discovering with us what you don’t, maintaining us quick on our feet. I have come to terms with the fact that this will always be a work in progress...I still hope it makes you proud. To the Everyday Urbanities Thesis Team and the first ever graduating class of Design and Urban Ecologies: I have learned so much from each one of you and from all as a collective, my love and respect for you always. How I wish we could do this all over again. So may this only be the beginning. To my best friends, Marco: gracias por acompañarme y aprender conmigo. Además, gracias por aguantar la locura (buena, espero) que D-UE me ha provocado. Gracias por tu paciencia. Te amo. Mamá: no estaría aqui si no fuera por ti. Eres lo que aspiro ser. Algún día llegaré. Papá: gracias por seguir acompañandome en mis noches largas, por ser mi alarma y ser mi luz desde allá arriba. Gracias por darme el ejemplo de perseverar y luchar por el bien de los que nos rodean. Gracias a vos y a mamá por su infinito amor. 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction
06
II. On The Street
Vamos Unidos
III. Under, Before, Above and After the Street
10 12
IV. Behind the Street The “Commissary” The “Commissary” as Point of Entry
26
V. Operational Street Ecologies A New Urban Ecology VI. Beyond the Street
32
VII. Bibliography
54
30
50
3
4
This is a call to action. To New York City. To Street Food Vendors. To those that oppress them and those that make them stronger. To their clients, their distributors and their employers. To their families to students to you, to me, To Us. To all city dwellers and makers.
5
I
INTRODUCTION WHAT IS THIS DOCUMENT? AND WHY SHOULD YOU READ IT? What you have in your hands is a proposal for an alternative economic and social system. By “alternative economic system” I do not refer to a different currency or monetary system, although some of those models are very compelling and worth a whole other thesis year.* And by “alternative social system” I do not refer to a drastic turn in the way we currently operate as a “society” and relate to one another. By “alternative economic and social system” I mean a change of our social relationships which are both a cause for and a result from altering the dominant motives of the financial model that defines much of what surrounds us in “hard” and “soft infrastructure”. “Hard infrastructure” is that which we can touch with our hands and feel against our bodies, and “soft infrastructure” is that which we call social relationships and the way we interact with one another as co-habitants of the same “hard” space. This document proposes a democratic financial system based on ownership changes and values of cooperation. This, in turn, would provoke a very different social pattern that would influence everything from the way we treat one another, to the way the built environment would look and the way it would work, to our relationship with materiality and the Earth.
It begins with a school project, and it ends with a vision for a new urban ecology. This is a thesis project titled “VETU” which stands for “VAMOS EN TODO UNIDOS”. It translates to “United in All” or “We are United in All”. It is a proposal for developing inclusive and intersecting planes of living production in the urban. This story takes place in New York City and it begins with street food vendors.
The streets of New York have a rhythm, a pace and a vibrancy that is particular and unique to its place, attracting approximately 50 million tourists a year** and keeping the 8 million residents co-habiting in the same complex space. Part of this comes from, and causes, an ongoing circulation of cultures and thus diversity of foods. Food vendors on the street feed and serve New York everyday, with a variety of menus that challenge and excite hungry taste buds, and also comfort the repeating client, the one on a budget and * See appendix for additional notes on “alternative economics”. ** Data for 2012 from The Official Guide NYC http://www.nycgo.com/articles/nyc-statistics-page which accounts for some recorded data by hotels and airlines. 6
the one on a culinary adventure. But the everyday urbanities of that street food vendor are seldom exposed on the surface. It takes two academic semesters for urban ecologies masters students to start to grasp what the stainless steel extrusion on wheels really means.
Seven graduate students at Parsons, The New School for Design, formed the Everyday Urbanities team for their second and final year of the Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies. They partnered with an organization of street food vendors in New York City, VAMOS Unidos, which will be explained in the next section, to conduct a forensic study on the ubiquitous, loved/hated, businesses of the streets of New York. Not knowing where they would begin nor end, the Fall semester took off. This document is organized in sequence of both logic and time. During the Fall semester I was part of the Everyday Urbanities team and ended up with my part of the study titled “The Social INTRA-structure of Street Food Vending in NYC”, which consists primarily of a look at the operations of this form of business. Pieces of this are found in chapters two (On the Street) and three (Under, Before, Above, and After the Street). The second semester served to continue to fill in gaps and questions from the past months and then turned a project of an alternate legal, yet disruptive, mode of operation for the better-being of the vendors and their surrounding communities. Chapters four (Behind the Street) and five (Operational Street Ecologies) describe this process and chapter six (Beyond the Street) furthers the story beyond that initial group of street food vendors.
Midway through the second semester, evidenced in the middle of chapter five, flourished a new partnernship, with a classmate and colleague outside of my thesis team, Troy Andrew Hallisey who was part of the housing group “Rethink the Block”. His reserach focused on the affordable crisis in New York, which he claimed to be inseparable from the jobs crisis, and thus centered his attention to more detail in economic processes and the power of capital. He looked at examples of collectivization as alternative of power to capital, understanding the barriers and issues of control, ownership, exclusion, temporality and the role of the individual in semi-autonomous economic, political and social enclaves. As we informally initiated conversations about our work, our ideas about worker-owned business for production, necessary shift in 7
INTRODUCTION WHAT IS THIS DOCUMENT? AND WHY SHOULD YOU READ IT? the everyday practices and struggles of workers, and alleviation strategies for housing, made increasingly more sense as integrated conversations rather than separate topics. Our research, interests and ideas were intertwined no matter what.
Jonathan and Sabrina
Jessica, Bonnie, Sabrina, Jonathan
Miodrag and Miguel
Bill, Cristina, Troy, Scott from Working World
Rafael at VAMOS Unidos
VAMOS Unidos headquarters in Bronx, NY
8
Quilian
Gabrielle and Bonnie
Quilian, Beatriz and Miguel
Drew
Following, are this group’s findings, questions and alternatives to the current method of operation, with a particular group of street food vendors that live and survive New York City.
This is a new urban ecology. Because it is urgent, because it is around you, and because it is possible. 9
II
ON THE STREET OUR PARTNER: VAMOS UNIDOS VAMOS Unidos* stands for “Vendedores Ambulantes Movilizando y Organizando en Solidaridad” which translates to “Street Vendors Mobilizing and Organizing in Solidarity”. It is a community-based social justice organization founded by and composed of primarily low-income Latin American immigrants that work as street food vendors. Their vision is “to develop a strong, empowered base and leadership of low-income workers who are politically conscious, economically self sufficient, and able to win change on local and national policies.”** They ground themselves on three levels of social justice - the local, the national and the global, whereby they organize workers not only on street vending rights, but also on economic, racial justice and immigrant rights, thus connecting their causes to those of other communities. * VAMOS Unidos will sometimes be abbreviated as VU throughout the document ** VAMOS Unidos mission statement from the organization website: www.vamosunidos.org
VAMOS Unidos logo
VAMOS Unidos members protest
Alfonso gets his cart approved by DOH
Monthly meeting in Manhattan
“We push for the decriminalization of migrants, protections here and in their countries of origins, equal rights, papers, access to services and benefits, the right to stay and travel, and that their work be valued,” says Rafael Samanez, leader of the organization. 10
The difficulty to fulfill their mission increases as the vendors’ everyday urbanities are complicated by the urban system they navigate. Following, is a section that attempts to capture what this process is like.
VAMOS Unidos members and families
VU Members in political education program
It is important to note a significant difference of street food vendors for this specific analysis. There are two main types: those who “own�, or vend independently, and those who are employed, or are on a dependent end of a larger business structure. The employees refers to the vendors that work on a cart that does not belong to them, whereby they are vendors on particular shifts on a cart owned by someone who owns many other carts and employ many vendors. Many of these are the famous carts that sell hot dogs and pretzels or the ubiquitous halal cuisine. This is a multi-billion dollar industry for the owner(s). The other type of street vendor is he or she who owns the cart and performs a multitude of other functions to keep that cart in place besides just vending the edible products. He or she owns the one cart that he or she works on. The vendors presented in this piece, who make up the bulk of the VAMOS Unidos membership, are for the most part these independent vendors.
11
III
UNDER, BEFORE, ABOVE & AFTER THE STREET STREET FOOD VENDING IN NEW YORK CITY The narrative surrounding New York City, until recently, has been shaped more around its vast economic wealth, opportunity, and its status as a ‘Global City’. This story continues, blinders intact, to create a vision of New York City that explicates the ‘formal’ processes of laws and political economy; while simultaneously mystifying how many ‘informal’ processes of production, distribution, and everyday life occur within the dual city. Our work, the research of Everyday Urbanities, attempts to make the implicit/masked/everyday processes of the city more explicit through a parallel investigation between the macro and micro, formal and informal processes, as they interact, contradict, and sometimes compliment one another. One powerful example, and the initial focus of our transdiciplinary research, is precisely the case of street food vendors.
Street food vendors in downtown Manhattan
Street food vendors in Corona Park in Queens
Many of these local startups can be lucrative, and relatively easy entries into self owned employment. Unfortunately, the city of New York has been incredibly punitive with its regulations of where these vendors sell their wares. These restrictions have taken the form of legal obligations for vendors to locate their carts certain distances from doorways, commercial business’s, crosswalks, bus stops, fire hydrants, schools, hospitals, residences. This set of conditions is compounded by street restrictions by time, cart size/type/ function specifications, and the private regulation of public space granted by city government to Business Improvement District’s (BID’s). Today, the regulations are so convoluted that they can be instrumentalized against the vendor contextually by mobilizing the existing regulatory apparatus. Crackdowns on vendors have therefore more to do with economic and political conditions, rather than conditions on the streets. It happens in a decentralized, privatized and informal way through techniques of surveillance, intimidation and physical interventions on the sidewalks.* * Text beginning with “The narrative surrounding New York City,” and ending with “physical interventions on the sidewalks” is from one of our team’s working documents from Fall 2013. 12
Intra- as a prefix means “within” and refers to that which is in between or within something else. The Social Intra-structure of Street Food Vending in New York City is a study of the operational and economic processes that are layered between what is surfaced on the street, in the shape of a vendor selling food on four wheels. That vendor we see on that street, selling that food in that cart, at that given time and that given date is a set of a meticulous multiplicity of decisions and pressures that come together to form the complex ecology of street food vending. The city provides a list of steps to follow for a person that decides to vend food on the street. This consists of a four-page document prepared by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that states the need for a food protection certificate or mobile food vending protection course to obtain the food vending license and then a permit for the cart or vehicle from the Department of Health. Additionally, a list of restricted streets is available for pick up in their downtown Manhattan office or online in a pdf last updated in 2007. It all sounds fairly simple and straightforward. According to the document, the whole process could take around four weeks. Based on months of primary and secondary research collection and analysis, the easiest part of this process to evidence is that it is not like that at all.
The pieces we see on the food cart: what’s behind?
“New York City laws for street food vending incentivize informal and illegal work”, claims the son of a vendor.* This statement refers to the subversive strategies that vendors and others involved in this ecology face, some profiting from, others merely surviving it. What the vending process in New York City is really like for a street food vendor is complicated, but nonetheless one that is navigated by more than twenty thousand people on a daily basis.** * Interview to arepa vendor,who has been selling on the street for thirty-five years, and her son. ** According to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, there are 20,000 permitted licenses in the city. This means there are 20,000 street vendors selling with a license. The real number of vendors might in fact be double this one, as there are thousands that sell without a license. 13
UNDER, BEFORE, ABOVE & AFTER THE STREET STREET FOOD VENDING IN NEW YORK CITY The diagram on the following page serves two purposes: first, it shows an ecology of the multitude of events, people, institutions and “forces” that intersect around the seemingly simple topic of informality and street food vending. Second, it served as a map for our group members, at the end of the first semester, as it traced our routes of investigation through topics and their intersecting relationships. Borrowing language from our professor William Morrish, it is a visual of the ‘Governing Terrain’ of street food vending in New York City. Our hope here was to create a process that would work retroactively to show us where we had been, what we found, and how the connections between these instances/actors/forces could propel us forward in our work. This map allowed us to reveal the multi-disciplinary work we had been undertaking around a broad swath of themes within our shared topic. When sharing the research generated from these investigations that often happened individually, we were able to utilize this tool to have a more in depth conversation across disciplines, theories, and instances of ethnographic experience. It not only helped us trace our journey in understanding the ecology of street food vending but it also highlighted the gaps in our research, opening spaces for the following semester’s research.
14
1) Ecology of SFV by team
15
UNDER, BEFORE, ABOVE & AFTER THE STREET STREET FOOD VENDING IN NEW YORK CITY The diagram on the following page was elaborated during the first semester and continued in the second as a tool with Rafael from VAMOS Unidos to organize the conversations and findings that would easily confuse us. The street food vending process, as navigated by a vendor, is divided here into four major stages***:
a) Preparing to Vend b) Hitting the Street c) Staying There d) Leaving / Moving On
These four sections attempt to capture a chronological order, although it does not happen in the manner it has been organized, and it is not clear, and it is not orderly.**** The intent of these categories are thus not to replicate the blurry nature of the existing process, but rather clarify and show the current complexity in a legible manner. The information comes from interviews our team conducted, conversations we had, videos and articles encountered, surveys we made and surveys from other studies as well. *****
*** The division into four sections was Rafa’s suffestion, as a way to start to understand the complexities of street food vending in New York City. It has been used as a tool of organizing the cummulative research. **** Use the diagram as a summarized narrative. The subsequent section text will only discuss certain points of this complex process. ***** Alternate surveys come from Street Vendor Project, from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Thesis, New York Times and NYMag. 16
migration
ON THE STREET
MONEY
PERMITS
LICENSE
travel time
$
savings loans
penalized
home street
cart
banking shadow banking personal networks organization
$2,500
CAP
class exam $53 passport/tax ID seasonal $50 full term $200
commissary
black market $15,000-$25,000
green cart
city lottery $200
types
process
on-site
buying
manufactured (local outsource) $18,000-$30,000
being outside client relationships cooking
language work authorization education
preparing
barriers
autoconstruccion $100-$1,000
off-site
PRODUCTS
CART
MOTIVATIONS
only option monetary need enjoy freedom (schedule)
PREPARING TO VEND
VENDING
friend
ACTIVE PERMIT
owner employee marketing accountant administrator manager chef/cook server cashier host(ess)
average income ($7,500-$20,000)
taxes/3months
health
time
emotional
physical
remittances family (local) loans fines
fear stress harrassment instability
cooking injuries back problems urinary health
9-12 hrs/day 4-5 days/wk 200-250 days/yr
WORKING CONDITIONS
RUNNING THE BUSINESS
organization
lottery letter (English)
ACTIVE LICENSE
FINDING LOCATION
close proximity to home non-restricted streets increased foot traffic familiar territory cultural enclave “safe” streets
MONEY
HITTING THE STREET
expiration renewal
RESISTING THE PRESSURES
MAINTAINING THE BUSINESS
OBEYING THE RULES
SUPPLEMENTAL JOBS
DOI DCA DPR NYPD ECB DOHMH BIDS POPS
renewal
alt name
city enforcement business harrassment vendors theft air pollution environmental weather vehicular accidents (extreme) brick-n-mortar restaurants
owner employee marketing accountant administrator manager lawyer
license permit unwritten rules DOH commissary storage $50/day transport $250-$500/month rent supplies exclusivity
expiration
STAYING THERE
alternates
restaurant employee taxi driver brick-n-mortar restaurant owner other job job “upgrade” subversive spatial strategies street arrangements extreme spatial mobility leave
LEAVING / MOVING ON
2) SFV Process Research Diagram
17
UNDER, BEFORE, ABOVE & AFTER THE STREET STREET FOOD VENDING IN NEW YORK CITY A) PREPARING TO VEND This first section encases what happens before taking the business out onto the street. The vendors specified here are those that make up the VAMOS Unidos membership who are, in the most part, Latin American immigrants selling with or without permits, selling with or without licenses, and who are owners of their own business.
Once the vendor-to-be has chosen to become a street food vendor, based on a wide series of personal motivations, he or she goes out on the street with a cart, either made by themselves, “auto-construida” which can cost anywhere between $100 to $1,000, or with a cart that has been specifically manufactured for street food vending, made locally, where the cost can be in the range of $18,000-$30,000. Not only must this manufactured cart live up to a certain amount of standards to be approved by the Department of Health, it must contain the vending permit. But before getting that cart permit, the vendor license is necessary. This can be seasonal or full term, ranging from $50 to $200, which includes an additional cost and time for classes and a food exam. This particular step also requires identification paperwork, which can put the vendor-to-be in a precarious position and in one that requires more maneuvering.
Then, the cart permit may come from three sources: the city lottery, the green cart lottery or the black market. According to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, there are 5,000 cart permits out on the streets.****** The city lottery, which is capped and highly solicited, lends itself to the black market permit. It is these limitations and city permit regulations that blow the black market out of proportion and allow for it to regenerate itself continuously. The vendor can also decide to vend without a permit because of the difficulty of obtaining it and being faced with the economic need, hoping to not get caught. All in all, these first couple of steps require capital that the vendor or family might not have. Much of this money may come from loans, which based on the membership involved, stem from a network of friends and family and are built around trust. One of these examples is a “tanda” which is a circle of eleven friends. These eleven loan members ****** Number announced by director of the new Mobile Food Vending Office of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in April 2014. 18
are gathered solely based on people that trust one another. Every eight days, one of the “tanda” members gives $100 to the person receiving the loan that week, totalling $1,000 to the recipient. Then, the person that received the loan pays back by lending back to the circle on the same schedule, and the members dispersing and receiving the funds are managing the space based on a numerical rotation. “It’s like a nointerest loan with your friends.”
“The peer pressure kept her honest. If she missed a payment, the consequence was letting down friends, a harsher penalty to her than a default notice from a bank.” Here, the social connections and trust are critical. They are also known as lending circles or “rotating savings and credit associations”.
Renters
R1
Organization
VAMOS UNIDOS
R2
R3
$
R: renters
$ $
Tanda
p2pLending
Sources of Funding for St Food Vendors
Examples of solidarity economy have shown that the strongest point of the trade has been the exchange based on relationships which devalue the importance of the transaction and appreciate the strengthened social connections. Models of economie sociale et solidaire are based on humanizing capitalist economics and, in many cases, of alleviating certain injustices confronted by a particular group.
19
UNDER, BEFORE, ABOVE & AFTER THE STREET STREET FOOD VENDING IN NEW YORK CITY Once the decisions have been made about the cart, the licenses and permits, whether by vending legally or illegally as defined by the city enforcement agencies, the food to be sold has to be determined. In many cases observed, the street food vendors are selling food that originates from the places they have emigrated. It is food they know about and food they know how to prepare. It is a comfort, a safety, and a cultural exchange from the places they have left behind to the places they now try to become a part of. It is trade. It is economics. The vendors establish relationships with their client, relationships with the vendors they buy the goods from and with those that deliver their products on site. From multiple conversations with the vendors about their products and where they come from, we understand that some decisions for the purchase of the edible components are based on quality and pre-established relationships and very few times based on better prices. There are vendors that travel to markets and wholesale centers for some of their products, get others in the neighborhood baker, fruit vendor or butcher, and even some directly to their site, claiming preference for saving travel time over the cost of the delivery service. The prepared food they end up selling to clients, that are either cognisant or not fo the meal they are consuming, has a chaged meshwork of origin. Many of these products are being imported from the Latin American countries the vendors come from. They are microcosms of that point of origin.
B) HITTING THE STREET The strings that are pulled back to the vendors’ countries of origin go beyond the products and meals they prepare and sell. In many cases, the income generated by street food vending is sent back in the form of remittances, where the rest of the vendors’ family lives. This connection between the people and the food in a very direct manner has the potential of a cooperative that is tied on a macro level to those families who could even produce the food being sold on the streets of New York.
Running a food business is no easy feat. Let’s take a quick look at a scene in a restaurant in the following image where a hungry guy walks into a restaurant.
20
He walks in and is greeted by a host or hostess and taken to the table (person 1). Then, he is given utensils (person 2). He is given water (person 3). The waiter comes around to read the “specials of the day� (person 4). Hungry guy drank too much water and needs to use the restroom. He passes the bar and bartender (person 5). He descends the staircase and walks past the busy kitchen where he captures a glimpse of the team (persons 6, 7, 8, and 9). He makes it to the restroom. On his way back out he notices someone is taking out the trash (person 10). Furthermore, hungry guy does not see the office behind the kitchen with the manager, the accountant and the marketing department.
Roles in a Restaurant: the 10 people for 1
It sharply contrasts the scene at the street vendor’s business. The street vendor, in most cases, plays all of those roles.
Roles in a Street Food Cart: the 1 to 1
Street Food Vendor here is: the host(ess) the chef the sous chef the waiter (waitress) the owner the manager the accountant the marketing department the driver or pusher the cleaner the trash disposer 21
UNDER, BEFORE, ABOVE & AFTER THE STREET STREET FOOD VENDING IN NEW YORK CITY C) STAYING THERE When asking vendors what the hardest part of their job is, the most common answers are “tickets and fines” and the “long harsh hours”. One of the main causes of tickets is for mobile unit placement. A vendor can pick up a list of permitted or restricted streets from a City office downtown, but is not as simple as that. We, as a team, were able to digitize this map and make it interactive according to the constantly changing rules from time of the day, day of the week, and month of the year. However, as our research progressed, we learned that this rendered useless given that the restrictions on the street or sidewalk placement have multiple other layers that make vending an extremely nebulous process, for enforcement agencies as well and especially for the vendors who suffer the costs of confusion and power.
PDF of Restricted Streets and Times for Mobile Food Vending, picked up from the City Department Office
Everyday Urbanities Team digital and interactive mapping of Restricted Streets
22
Further mapping overlays of restricted streets with BIDs and POPs.
The “long” part that the vendors refer to are the amount of hours from the moment of waking up to the moment of going back to bed. The “harsh” part can refer to many things, such as being subject to weather conditions which not only affect their health, but also the number of sales for the day, or knowing that any enforcement agency may come to their location regarding something they may be doing wrong, that they may be aware of or may not, as well as possible harrasment from other vendors, from shop or restaurant owners, from pedestrians or clients. Following is a glimpse of what a day for a street food vendor may look like.
23
UNDER, BEFORE, ABOVE & AFTER THE STREET STREET FOOD VENDING IN NEW YORK CITY These maps illustrate the lines of distance traveled by street food vendors. However, the straight line connecting the points of residence to the points of vending does not show the “real” distance in terms of time and hardship.
Vending Locations, based on ticket violation data for Manhattan Image Credit: Troy Andrew Hallisey
Lines of Distance from Vending Locations to corresponding Vendor’s Residences, based on ticket violation data for Manhattan Image Credit: Troy Andrew Hallisey
Lines of Distance from Vending Locations to corresponding Vendor’s Residences, based on ticket violation data for Manhattan, In collaboration with Gabrielle Andersen
The diagram in the following page traces a day of a street food vendor. It describes some parts of the previous overall process diagram. D) LEAVING / MOVING ON Some vendors maintain their street food occupations out of passion and uncommon success. Others maintain it by finding secondary jobs that allow for this one to be a viable supplement. Others “upgrade”******* to a restaurant or taxi-driving job, and others simply move on or move back to where they came from, including their country of origin in Central and South America. ******* Sean Basinki, from Street Vendor Project, shared vendors’ views of restaurant and taxi-driving as “upgrades” from street food vending. 24
12:00am
Home in Morris Heights, Bronx
Home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn
sleep
$
prep food
$$
wake up get ready
MTA train
travel
prep cart & utensils
travel
buy food wait for all passengers $ to finish shopping travel
prep kids
pick up other people
return home
set up @ USQ
friend’s house
discuss with DOH
$
driver in $ commercial van arrives sells with her cart food
$
$
receives fines from DOH
$$$$$
travel
$
MTA train
$
driver in commercial van takes her cart
Home in Washington Heights, Manhattan
12:00pm 01:00pm 02:00pm 03:00pm 04:00pm 05:00pm 06:00pm 07:00pm 08:00pm 09:00pm 10:00pm 11:00pm 12:00am
travel
$
MTA train
12:00pm 01:00pm 02:00pm 03:00pm 04:00pm 05:00pm 06:00pm 07:00pm 08:00pm 09:00pm 10:00pm 11:00pm 12:00am
cart has arrive at been stolen DOH commissary
travel
preps food
01:00am 02:00am 03:00am 04:00am 05:00am 06:00am 07:00am 08:00am 09:00am 10:00am 11:00am
prep food
wake up
wake up get ready
Hunts Point Food Terminal Market
01:00am 02:00am 03:00am 04:00am 05:00am 06:00am 07:00am 08:00am 09:00am 10:00am 11:00am
Home in Washington Heights, Manhattan
12:00am
3) Day in the Life of
25
IV
BEHIND THE STREET THE “COMMISSARY” According to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, “All mobile food vending units must be serviced daily and stored overnight in a facility (called a “commissary”) with a Health Department permit, except those units that only sell prepackaged foods, and Green Carts, which only sell fresh fruits and vegetables. Commissaries should provide: cleaning and sanitizing services, potable water, disposal of liquid and solid waste, food, storage space for vending units, and food preparation areas.” *
Articles 81 and 89 of the Health Code define a commissary and the laws relating to its use for mobile food vending. It is a non-retail food service establishment approved by the Department of Health where the mobile vending carts can be washed, stored and replenished with food and supplies. It is a warehouse or a storage space with plumbing and electric facilities. The Spanish-speaking vendors know the commissaries as “garajes”,** which translates directly to “garages”. They have become highly solicited and quite selective. The owner of the commissary, who has a higher purchasing power than a singular street food vendor, buys food, drinks and utensils in bulk, stores them in the refrigerators and freezers of the space and re-sells these supplies to the vendors who are renting out parking or storage space. It has become an oligopoly of those supplying to vendors of the hot dog, pretzel and halal carts.
María Azucena shared her experience regarding her “garaje”: “Yo no quería seguir comprando el hot dog bun, porque no vengo hot dogs, yo vendo comida Latina. Pero me sentía obligada a comprarle eso y otras cosas porque hay pocos espacios para guardar tu carrito, y entonces tuve que cambiar mi menú para usar lo que le compraba. Pero mis clientes me buscaban por otra comida. Hasta que me cansé, porque además, me trataban muy feo allí. Cuando dejé de comprarle su comida me sacaron. Ahora ando buscando donde guardar y limpiar mi carrito pa que no me den un tiquete por eso.” “I did not want to continue purchasing the hot dog bun, because I don’t sell hot dogs, I sell Latin American food. But I felt obliged to buy him that and other things since there are few places to store your cart, so I * “Updated Regulations for Mobile Food Vendors, What You Need to Know”, updated April 2014, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, City of New York. ** Terminology learned from conversations with Rafa from VAMOS Unidos and multiple vendors 26
Three different commissaries were investigated and analyzed. One in Manhattan, one in Bronx and one in Brooklyn. Detailed here is the one in downtown Manhattan, presenting the most challenging square footage in the dense setting of the Financial District. The plan is approximately 20’ x 70’. There are two levels. The ground level, which is slightly raised and accessed through a short and steep metal ramp, parked between five to seven carts on three visits there. The “washing room” is also on this floor. On the basement level is where the supply, storage and manager/ owner desk lives. The screens with the images from the cameras that are monitoring the upstairs and storage spaces are on his desk.
Plans of Existing Commissary
had to change mi menu to use what I was buying. But my clients looked for me for other food. I then got tired, because also, they did not treat me well there. When I stopped buying his food, they kicked me out. Now I am looking for a place to store and clean my cart so I don’t get a ticket for that.”
This current situation has put the Latin American vendors in a difficult position finding very few, if any, places to rent to store and maintain their carts. Many vendors find other places to store their carts, such as friends’ garage spaces, in their own “parking” spaces, paying other parking lots or garages, and hoping not to get a ticket due to the lack of a letter from an approved commissary, which must be maintaing daily logs of all the carts it stores. Owners of these commissaries are given the power to charge high rents for the space and instead of treating the vendors as clients, given that it is they who keep them in business, they are, for the most part, treated with disrespect. Internal class issues surface and become a dominant part of 27
BEHIND THE STREET THE “COMMISSARY” the hardships the vendors face before or after a full day of stress and exposure on the street. An example is when the owner has a higher education and the vendors do not, and the owner knows they cannot read or write and attributes their mess and disobedience or lack of understanding of the rules to these differentiating levels of education.
In the following page is a study of a day in one of the existing commissaries which looks at the roles with the physical relations between the commissary staff (or owner) and the vendor. There are moments of tension, of agonism, and a couple of instances of solidarity. This proves to be a critical space for the vendors’ operations.
Conversation notes and sketches in one of the commissary visits, February 2014 28
STREET FOOD VENDORS (clients of the commissary)
THE COMMISSARY STAFF (owner) (manager) (employee(s))
04:00
commute
05:00
prepare
open
06:00
PREPARING TO OPERATE / VEND
BEHIND THE STREET - COMMISSARY OPERATIONS 1
check cart
arrive
receive vendor
07:00
look for pick up products
assist RAMP take out cart
pack products inside cart
log in PRODUCTS report
08:00
vendor pushes/ drives off cart
clean up after vendor
09:00
vendor selling food on the street
prepare vendor’s bill
10:00
11:00
12:00
business management
HITTING THE STREET / MANAGING
receive supplies from trucks
13:00
place accordingly
unload supplies
14:00
possible visits
15:00
DOH vendors suppliers (thesis students)
16:00
MAINTAINING THE BUSINESS
vendor pushes/ drives cart
arrive
receive vendor
17:00
assist RAMP pull in cart
18:00
park cart
coordinate washing order give BILL pay
19:00
clean cart/ dispose waste
wait for wash turn
supervise
20:00
wash cart
park cart
clean
commute
21:00
CLOSING THE DAY
close
22:00
Existing Commissary Operations and Functions as carried out by Staff and Vendor
29
IV
BEHIND THE STREET THE COMMISSARY AS POINT OF ENTRY How can the street food vendors alleviate the current vulnerabilities they face, and turn them into strengths whereby the vendor can have more power in his, her, and their everyday urbanities? The point of entry is the commissary. There are certain parts of the street food vending process that are not in the hands of the vendors to control, but this particular point could be, and could thus strategically target other points as well.
VAMOS Unidos currently operates out of the house of founder and president, Rafa, which he uses to hold membership meetings, and as general office space. Because the group is so engaged in social justice advocacy, a taboo area for 501(c)3 nonprofits, they often have difficulty acquiring funding. Rafa had expressed interest in renting a space for a commissary that could serve as a steady source of income for the organization. Thus, the project we will now discuss comes about from the need to develop a selfsufficient organization. Our project became an opportunity, to not only develop the commissary, but to also propose a comprehensive plan to create an integrated living production environment.
With the street food vendors’ existing knowledge and capacities, they can successfully manage and run a Vendor-Owned Cooperative Commissary. The short term target is to begin with their own operation which involves primarily the vendors. The long term goal is to partner with other cooperatives, and inspire new ones, from the other supportive activities around street food vending, such as food production and food distribution. The vision is to foster an economy run by value-driven businesses instead of those solely driven by profit and capital accumulation. The commissary cooperative has the potential of alleviating multiple hurting points. It may free up time for current vendors to take care of their personal and family doings. The tasks to run and operate the cooperative could provide jobs to those not currently selling on the street, waiting for their license or permit renewals, or wanting to find an alternate job in the related business. The different types of involvement would give the freedom and stability the families need. This could be housed in a DOH approved commissary, which are currently owned by a few who are making a large profit off of the vendors by selectively renting them the space to store their carts, wash and upkeep them, as well as sell them food products and black market licenses. 30
The vendors and cooperative members would invest their time and share their resources in the activities that support their values because of their common urgency, shared need, shared belief and common fight for a better living. They vendors have needs, some common to all, some particular and unique to a few. They have an enormous amount of assets, as individuals, as workers and as families and the cooperative would builds upon those strengths. It will enhance capacity also because of the shared skills.
“The solidarity economy includes a wide array of economic practices and initiatives but they all share common values that stand in stark contrast to the values of the dominant economy. Instead of enforcing a culture of cut-throat competition, they build cultures and communities of cooperation. Rather than isolating us from one another, they foster relationships of mutual support and solidarity. In place of centralized structures of control, they move us towards shared responsibility and democratic decision-making. Instead of imposing a single global monoculture, they strengthen the diversity of local cultures and environments. Instead of prioritizing profit over all else, they encourage a commitment to shared humanity best expressed in social, economic, and environmental justice.”*
The following proposal is based on this idea of shared skills, shared values and a cooperative environment. The project grows from the potential of a vendor-owned commissary cooperative called “El Garaje”. It expands to a location based union that co-exists with already-functioning infrastructure, and further envisions a model composed of various other cooperative structures. This leads to a new Urban Ecology, which consists of a rhizome of networked communities that cooperate and evolve through their extroverted missions and common causes of independence with self-sufficiency, a social economic agenda and an ever-increasing reach of solidarity.
* Quote from SolidarityNYC 31
V
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY This is a call to an alteration of current processes with the goal of mitigating the street food vendors’ families’ instabilities and by beginning with the networks that directly affect the job of a street food vendor, we can begin to think of this wider city-scale effect on the distribution, production, consumption, residence and thus livelihood of alternate motivations for city dwellers and makers.
By flipping the ownership model of particular points in the street vending process, Vamos En Todo Unidos, based on broader participation, will flip the vulnerabilities the vendors face and turn them into strengths for themselves, their families and the New York they feed and serve every day.
These models would strengthen Vamos Unidos’s already existing programming and at the same time, secure its financial health and stability. A worker coop is a workplace democratically owned and run by its workers. The Vamos Unidos Co-op would be a collective of people with a variety of roles and interests in the vending process and vending-related jobs, whose values closely align. This means those that are street food vendors, street cart mechanics, cart washers, cooks, legal consultants, financial consultants, babysitters, educators, and those that will be necessary to maintain the space physically and socially.
Through the design thinking of micro-cooperatives for the operational process of street food vending in New York City, we come up with subversive intra-structural strategies that will allow for the groups to not only succeed in the business, through strong rhizomatic networks, but also model a system that could be scaled up for different kinds of services that go beyond street food vending, serving communities for justice, presenting an alternate currency (flows, relationships and networks) from the ground up.
These social networks, which are acentered, have the potential both in the beginning of the vending process and once the vendors are out on the street, to maintain a dignified working environment and minimize the pressures and external hardships.
32
This new form of social relations can generate a different human and social organization which can thus change the surrounding physical context. The collectivization of traditionally formalized and capitalized processes can generate a completely different citÊ. It starts with workers, socializing formal spaces through the integration of their everyday in other institutions’ everydays. These newly formed networks in the dense urban space of the city can quickly grow into a broader system of cooperation and solidarity. It begins small, is strengthened and works up and out.
The following sections will be preceded by the timeline below. It sets a timeframe in years for the proposed pieces of the project. If seen together they can happen in the following sequence.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 years
33
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 years
The first part brings all the components of the vendors’ needs for commissary functions inside four walls, whereby the simple switch of the ownership model would already yield in a vastly different kind of space. Besides the roles of cart washing, cart parking, product delivery and refrigerated storage, and food preparation, “El Garaje” would also have spaces for their meeting and training programs in political, immigration and vending rights education. It would also have spaces that would support their families’ and children’s’ needs, and ultimately those for their financial circles and solidarity systems. This can happen in one centralized location. The main cart operations are the same as needed, but a new set of arrangements as a whole now exists within the new commissary co-op.
Commissary Cooperative Roles
The commissary department’s is mainly responsible for all of the activities that take place within the commissary itself. It is divided into two subgroups: Operations, with duties that relate to the carts themselves—pushers, washers, disposal, and maintenance. The accounting role works directly with the accounting role in the administration department to ensure sound finances. The Food team is responsible for handling all of the product being sold through the carts. The roles within this team include product ordering, receiving, preparing and cooking. Vending operations includes the actual vending. Under the 34
cooperative model, the carts are collectively owned the vendors are employee-owners and paid a salary. The Vending Operations department shares a subgroup with the Administration department that deals with the selling operations. This group handles marketing strategy, location placement, pricing of product, and setting shared schedules of operation.
However, a more immediate strategy is a “Garaje network”, which utilizes pre-existing infrastructure throughout the city. This is Ad-hoc coexistence, whereby the other systems in the city can co-support one another. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene approved “Alternate Service and Storage Facilities”. According to the new Health Code, there are four pushcarts allowed, there must be potable water, it must be pest-free and it cannot be used to prepare of store food. For the time being, the legality on this section is rather loose. This provides a set of rules to start with and utilize as opportunities for an immediate cooperative building strategy. So this strategy would take those vending maintenance components outside of the standard commissary walls, and move them throughout the city, attaching themselves into current structures that provide those services. No longer is the centrality and dependance on the existing commissaries at power. The center moves to where the vendors need it most. Their vending and preparatory processes are extremely mobile, but in this model, their operations don’t have to be so. This means that they can both increase their profit margin as well as work in a space that alleviates, rather than aggregates, their stress, where the emphasis is no more placed on the individual, but on a team effort, on a internal and external network of solidarity.
They are location-based unions. Four to seven vendors that live in close proximity to one another come together to strengthen their individual social networks and create their combined network. In this they identify four key pieces: to park, to wash, to cook and to deploy. According to the Health Laws, their cart must be stored in an enclosed space, it must be washed anywhere that is not in the public sidewalk or public space such as a park and their food must be prepared in an already approved DOH commercial kitchen. Based on their micro-local networks, the vendors identify the churches, schools, delis and parking garages where they could get these services and exchange something else for the washing, parking and 35
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY kitchen-preparing space. They could alternate the roles of picking up the food, delivering it, cooking it, preparing the carts, managing the space, receiving the carts and washing them, on a weekly and rotational basis. This could yield in a schedule with more freedom to tend to personal matters and in one that requires less exposure time on the street and its hardships as well. A cart and cart permit can thus be shared by two vendors who share the ownership and profit of the street vending.
How the Garaje Network forms from location-based unions
This is team building, and by working together on a collective effort they are not only sharing labor with one another, but also taking control of their management and thus their lives. This proposal decentralizes the monopoly of the commissary operations. It socializes public resources and formal spaces. The nodes, or micro-hubs aggregate and connect to Vamos Unidos and thus to one another. This is the beginning of the building of networks.
El Garaje consists of two main membership types, full members and partial members. Full members are the cooperative employee-owners, and belong to a member family, which are allowed one vote at cooperative membership meetings. In the event that a husband and wife are both full cooperative members, they would be allowed two votes. The worker cooperative is in turn expected to send a delegation the VETU cooperative congress. 36
Structure & relationships of the Commissary Co-op, Cooperative Congress, Executive Board of VU and Cooperative Caja Image Credit: Troy Andrew Hallisey
Diagramatic Example of NY Unida Hubs with Existing Infrastructure Image Credit: Troy Andrew Hallisey 37
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY In the following page is a scenario of a microhub of El Garaje Network in a selected radius of where a group of vendors lives and works. The strongest points to notice of this structure is that the vendors form small teams that provide the space to support one another on an intimate level with shared responsibilities, which simplify their schedules, allowing them more time to care for the personal, family and now co-operative matters and they begin to strengthen their social networks. In this new storyline, the time is compressed, so the spatial and economic efficiencies become clear and tangible.
38
39
12:00am
12:00am
1 2
1 2
1
2 1
Parking 2
School 1
Vendor Residence Parking2 2
School 1
drop off food pick up cart
5
street vend
license expires
receive & store prep food food
64
license expires
pick up street cart vend
42 receivestreet & storevend prep food food
pick street vend up street cart vend
53
drop receive off pick & store prep food up food food cart
School 2
Parking 1
Parking 1
Vendor Residence 4
Vendor Residence 4
organize
drive carts
manage
tend to family
weekend festival
organize weekend event
tend to family
manage group finances
drive carts
weekend festival
for kids & family matters weekend event finances 05:00pm 06:00pm 07:00pm 08:00pm 09:00pm 10:00pm 11:00pm 12:00am 10:00amcare11:00am 12:00pm 01:00pm 02:00pm 03:00pmgroup04:00pm
street vend
care for kids & family matters
wake up get ready meet buy neighbor food
wake up get ready
meet buy neighbor food
Vendor Residence 5
Vendor Residence 5
Vendor Residence 3
School 2
Vendor Residence 3
12:00pm 01:00pm 02:00pm 03:00pm 04:00pm 05:00pm 06:00pm 07:00pm 08:00pm 09:00pm 10:00pm 11:00pm 12:00am
Church 1
Church 1
receive drop off food & store prep food food go home
31
meet buy neighbor food
wake up drop off food get ready meet buy go home neighbor food 06:00am 07:00am 08:00am 09:00am
wake up get ready
01:00am 02:00am 03:00am 04:00am 05:00am
2
1
01:00am 02:00am 03:00am 04:00am 05:00am 06:00am 07:00am 08:00am 09:00am 10:00am 11:00am
1
Vendor Residence 1
1
Vendor Residence 1
2
Vendor Residence 2
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY The traditional, restricting and exclusive banking system forces the vendors to explore and create alternative sources of funding for themselves in the effort of providing for their families. This happens through friends, renters, subletters and their social networks. At this point, the members have formed their micro-cooperative and can thus begin to function as one with an organizational structure and an cooperative bank, or “Caja�, based on their existing loan structure practices.
Development of La Caja through existing and enhanced practices Image Credit: Troy Andrew Hallisey and Cristina M Handal G
Within the next couple of years, the micro-hubs continue to form in different neighborhoods of New York. The headquarters of Vamos Unidos continues to be in the Bronx, but they now have, as an organization, a more locally empowered member base.
0
40
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 years
It is a system of localized networks. This proposal decentralizes the monopoly of the commissary operations. It socializes public resources and formal spaces. The nodes, or micro-hubs, aggregate and connect to Vamos Unidos and to one another. This begins the building of a strong rhizomatic network.
Commissary Cooperatives - El Garaje Network
41
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 years
The last model is an integrative and coordinated model that focuses on Housing and Production in the same urban space. This model achieves a culture of solidarity and inclusion among street food vendors and their surrounding community through the development of a multi-planar cooperative that links “El Garaje”—a commissary worker coop, “La Casa” —a cooperative providing affordable housing, “Cultivar” —a network of food production sites, and “El Mercado”—a consumer cooperative market. By relying on the street food vendors’ common cause and use of shared resources, VAMOS en Todo Unidos (VETU) hopes to foster democratic participation and self-sustenance through alternative economic development.
The building becomes a “productive residence” (as referred to by Miguel Robles-Duran) and is proposed to be developed and owned by the worker cooperative, via VETU. Therefore, full members of the residential cooperative are also considered full-members of the commissary cooperative and have a right to share of the building. A limited equity cooperative model could be utilized to keep the building affordable, it could also be operated under a rental model, where the units of full-members are subsidized by the VETU cooperative as per their shareholder agreement. The building will also be open to other members of the community to live who are not affiliated with VETU and would be considered partial members. Partial members, then, would be families that simply are renting units from the residential cooperative. What is important to note, is that while the distributive worker cooperative does its job at providing a self-sufficient organization, the integrated model not only reinforces that through streamlined processes, but also promotes a culture of self-management. However, in this case autonomy is not rooted in exclusion, but promotes inclusionary practices through the regular interfacing of cooperative community members, partialmembers and non-member individuals in the community. The market cooperative is just one threshold where these meetings occur, but also cultural activities that can occur at the space also will have the potential to interface with the surrounding community. 42
43
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY
VETU Cooperatives Structure Image Credit: Troy Andrew Hallisey
These are spaces of cooking, of waking up, of classes, of taking a shower, of selling, of learning, of sleeping, of living and working. Living and production are the new ecology of the daily life of the vendors and their families. VETU stems from what is already working, from their individual survival strategies and scales the successful everyday practices for the collective. A site was selected in ased on residential locations of the VAMOS Unidos membership base, looking at rental rates in the Bronx, occupation type with a dominating service industry, zoning analysis and transit benefits. For more detail on these section, please refer to Troy Hallisey’s thesis document. Additionally, he realized a pro forma and thorough financial analysis for this site for feasibility and potential phasing in the design process.
Living Production Diagram 1 for VETU site 44
Following are some snapshots of this study.
45
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY Following is a diagram of the food production and vending components of VETU in potential adjacent spatial configurations. This is the beginning of what would yield in the physical design of the actual space in its appropriate site. The following exercises and sketches remain abstract but consider the site of 931 Bruckner boulevard for basic design guidelines and parameters.
46
47
hydroponic farms located through out the building
EL CULTIVO HP / HP FARM
the common kitchens located in various floors
consumer co-op market
LA COCINA / EL MERCADO / THE KITCHEN THE MARKET
worker-owned cart maintenance space
EL GARAJE / THE COMMISSARY
ON THE ROOFTOP
(the PV panels shown on the rooftop diagram represent the self-sustaining mission of the space, organization and project)
EL CULTIVO HP / HP FARM
and neighbors 3) they are sites of alternate jobs
EL CULTIVO TIERRA/ SOIL FARM
building 2) they are opportunities of education and relationship-building between vendors, families, residents,
have three key results: 1) they are income-generating spaces, or at a minimum self-sustaining, for the
proposed combinations allows for hybrid spaces of unconvential spatial configurations. These programs
These are the main food production and vending components in VETU. Their programmatic needs and
raised bed soil farm on ground level and rooftop
EL CULTIVO TIERRA / SOIL FARM
(the dark arrows show the direct relationship the
EL GARAJE / THE COMMISSARY food output to its adjacent spaces for AT GROUND LEVEL kitchen’s vending: market and commissary)
EL MARKET / THE MARKET
LA COCINA / THE KITCHEN
ON VARIOUS FLOORS THROUGHOUT THE BUILDING
EL CULTIVO HP / HP FARM
LA COCINA / THE KITCHEN
EL CULTIVO TIERRA/ SOIL FARM
OPERATIONAL STREET ECOLOGIES A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY In the following page is a series of daily processes of different residents, families and members of VETU.
Vamos En Todo Unidos Ecology
“Family is really important to us. Building it and working together means a lot. It’s not complete strangers, but it’s a big family helping each other out at the same time. It allows us to feel each other out and work together, and be happy in a good environment.“ -nephew of Salvadorian food cart owners 48
49
Jonathan and Andrea spend their Monday Summer morning helping out at El Cutlivo on the ground level.
Teresa wakes up at 9am and checks out the sun-drying mushrooms she has been working on this week. They’re looking good. Some are ready to go downstairs to El Mercado. She calls Juan to take them over.
BALCON - 10
Silvia wakes up at 8am. She lives on the 5th floor.
EL COMEDOR - 4
El Garaje team preps the carts with utensils and food for the vendors to take out.
EL GARAJE - 01
LA COCINA - 01
Ana and Max are leading the ground floor kitchen team as they cook up a storm to prepare food for the Market’s indoor sales and El Garaje for the vendors to sell outdoors.
VETU members have daycare and school activities on site for the children of the cooperative. This alleviates financial cost and emotional pressure from busy parents that work off site.
EL MERCADO
LA COCINA
Silvia heads out to take the train to the Department of Health. There is a workshop at 11am regarding new regulations for street food vendors. It is delivered in English and she is one of the few bilingual VETU members, and as such is selected as an information ambassador for such purposes.
Juan takes the mushrooms that are ready to be bagged and sold at El Mercado. Half of the sun-dried produce will be taken to first to Las Cocinas 10 and 12 for the floor meals.
10
11
12
LA COCINA
Silvia gets ready. She goes down one flight, to the 4th floor to have breakfast at El Comedor (The Dining Room). Mari and Alex made food today and will be making their scrumptious dishes all week at El Comedor 4, for floors 4 and 5.
5
LA CLASE - 2
Street food vendors are out selling in processing & non-processing carts. The vendors can focus on selling while the rest of the VETU team takes care of legal details, their kids, job security for other family members and hours that allow for that family time.
The older children and teenagers are enjoying their Summer activities at VETU. They rotate daily between the gardens, the classrooms and soccer time!
She returns to VETU at 2pm, prepares to translate the information she learned and the documentation she can share with the street food vendors. She will lead a couple of workshops that week tailored to the vendors’ schedules since the new regulations will be going into effect next month.
3
4
5
Vendors return to El Garaje after a full day of great sales and new clients and the team on the ground takes the carts in to wash and store for a good night’s sleep.
The Fernandez and Suarez families are leading a cooking demo in floor 4, whilst preparing
That evening, at 6pm, they are holding a VETU Congress meeting. Silvia makes her way to the adjacent space in the second floor. The first order of business is the bi-monthly tiangui (Latin American street fair) organization for July.
VI
BEYOND THE STREET A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 years
This is VETU in Bronx connected to the microhubs that have been strengthening in other parts of New York.
Future Growth - Expansion of La Casa Co-op
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 years Three years later, vendors in Bushwick replicate the model. In Brooklyn, the vendors focus on producing food to package and enter the realm of non-processing food carts, thus expanding their รกrea of reach.
Future Growth - Another Point of Intersection and Effect
50
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 years
The following year, the vendors in Ozone Park, Queens join to become a cart manufacturing cooperative.
Future Growth - Cart Production
+ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 years VAMOS en Todo Unidos fosters democratic participation and self-sustenance through alternative economic development that achieves a culture of solidarity and inclusion among street food vendors and their surrounding community through the development of a multi-planar cooperative network. The collectivization of traditionally formalized and capitalized processes can generate a completely different citÊ. It begins small, is strengthened and works up and out. It starts with workers, socializing formal spaces through the integration of THEIR everyday in other institution and people’s everydays. These then newly formed networks in the dense urban space of the city quickly grow into a broader system of cooperation and solidarity.
There are fissures that thus enhance this particularization, or molecularization; there are only a few large molecules, versus many weakened atoms. A new integrated urban ecology mends those broken lines by strenghtening the healthy ones and building new ones. These form more equally distributed lines that form a strong web. The formation and growth of one web eventually intersects with another nearby, also growing 51
BEYOND THE STREET A NEW INTEGRATED URBAN ECOLOGY: YEAR 10 AND ONWARDS web, and these now together form changing story, strengthened by the core values they sustain and share. The new webs grow out to form, find and attach to yet others.
The goal is a multicentric rhizomatic network of living production.
VAMOS en Todo Unidos fosters democratic participation and self-sustenance through alternative economic development that achieves a culture of solidarity and inclusion among street food vendors and their surrounding community through the development of a multi-planar cooperative network. Through the project, VAMOS Unidos, or those in this undertaking can “acquire the right to have rights.” (-Miguel Robles-Durán) They will gain more political visibility. Their values will thrive if there is spatial coherence with their already existing practices. They are “reenergizing existing relationships and inventing new sets of relationships” (-Miodrag Mitrasinovic), new sets of relationships within the public realm. By challenging, restructuring and thus enriching this intermediate space, the vendors become producers and catalysts of an alternate public realm. The goal is not complete autonomy but rather a fortified, or strengthened, more interconnected social fabric. The site of living becomes a site of production, a site of distribution, a site of commoning. This is a new social INTRA-structure. It is the new urban ecology.
52
Let’s get to work. 53
VII
BIBILIOGRAPHY GRATEFUL TO THE FOLLOWING SOURCES: Worker Cooperative Toolbox. Northcounty Cooperative Foundation. 2006.
A Blueprint for A Co-Operative Decade. International Co-operative Alliance. January 2013.
Home Base, The Playbook for Cooperative Development. NCB Capital Impact.
Luxemburgo, Rosa. Reforma o Revolucion. 1899.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis. 1987.
Scott, Brett. The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money. Pluto Press. 2013.
Wrigth, Erik Olin. Basic Income as a Socialist Project. Madison. 2005.
AlSayyed, N. (2004). Urban informality as a new way of life. In A. Roy & N. Al-Sayyed (Eds.), Urban InformalityOxford: Lexington Books.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkley: University of California Press.City of the year.
Devlin, T. R. (2011). ‘An area that governs itself’: Informality, uncertainty and the management of street food vending in New York City. Planning Theory Sage,
Illich, I. (n.d.). Toward a history of needs.
Sassen, S. (2005). The global city: Introducing a concept.The Brown Journal of World Affairs, XI(2)
54
The New Economics Foundation
Future Growing LLC http://futuregrowing.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/bellbookandcandle/
Rooftop Hydroponic Garden NYC http://www.thecoolist.com/rooftop-hydroponic-garden-nyc/
Top Five Urban Farms in New York City, Inhabitat, NYC, Krista Leighy, June 22, 2011 http://inhabitat.com/nyc/top-5-urban-farms-in-new-york-city/
On a School Rooftop, Hydroponic Greens for Little Gardeners, NYTimes http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/on-a-school-rooftop-hydroponic-greens-for-little-gardeners/?_ php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Alexandra Vozick Hans , Amalgamated Housing: The History of a Pioneer Co-Operative 192, Bronx, New York, June 2007.
NPR Interview with Professor Venkatesh about his book Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=6195673
VAMOS Unidos website www.vamosunidos.org
Documentation from the City of New York, from the Department of Health and Mental Hygience, from the Department of Parks and Recreation, from the Department of Consumer Affairs
Multiple reports from Street Vendor Project who make them publicly available on their website. Thanks to Google for so many free images. Special thanks to all the vendors that were so kind to speak to us and share their experiences and knowledge 55
56