The street vendors' location, the city and the subaltern global fluxes

Abstract

In Brazil, a new type of commercial building, that stands out by its big dimensions together with its architectural simplicity, called the street vendors'market has systematically been inserted in the urban scenarios. But what is most important about its strong presence is that what was once destined to be a place for all the street vendors that occupied the streets and central squares of the cities, now presents itself as a sort of solution adopted by the municipal administrations to a long and endless conflict between the owners of the commercial stores (but not only them) of the sites occupied by the vendors and the increasing group legally classified as informal trades. The street vendors'public market building, even when located in the less valued regions of the city, is not only a regular space of goods sale, but mainly as a place of contact with a multiplicity of fluxes (especially economic and cultural) that extrapolate the city, the region, and the country reaching the most poor population called here subaltern global fluxes. This text attempt to reflect on and assess the category of informality in the urban space departing from the phenomenon of public markets, the fluxes that they comprise, and the place they occupy in the production of cities.