What does the future hold for street food in Bangkok?
On Friday, December 13, Bangkok city authorities launched a pilot project to pedestrianize several streets on weekend evenings. The aim is to make room for street vendors, attract tourists, and thereby boost the local economy.
Gwenn Pulliat, University of Montpellier and Carmen Dreysse, Lyon Normal School
These few streets are located in the city's most touristy neighborhoods: Yaorawat (Chinatown), Khao San Road, and Silom. While the capital is already an important hub for the region, the development of tourism remains a priority for local and national authorities.
This initiative may seem fairly mundane, given the international trend toward redeveloping pedestrian zones to revitalize city centers. But in Bangkok, it is not without irony: since 2014, local authorities (the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, BMA) have been implementing a policy prohibiting street vending. This is part of the "reorganization of public space" decided by the ruling military junta. The BMA is translating this general slogan into the "return the sidewalks to pedestrians" campaign, which promises order and cleanliness in the city. This eviction policy affects some 200,000 to 300,000 street vendors (including an estimated 40% who sell food), including those who were registered and set up in areas officially designated for street vending.
The eviction of street vendors: differences depending on the area of the city
The enforcement of this ban varies depending on the area of the city. In the central commercial and business district around Siam Square and on the main thoroughfares, intense police surveillance ensures that street vendors do indeed leave public spaces. In contrast, the soi, or narrow alleys typical of the city, are less closely monitored and still host many street vendors. The boundaries between public and private space are porous, as anthropologist Bronwin Isaacs has pointed out.
Vendors negotiate with residents or stores to rent private spaces adjacent to the street. Most, however, occupy public space illegally and must flee when the police appear, or risk having their products and carts confiscated and being fined. Police checks are a daily occurrence. The vendors interviewed report a decrease in their income and new difficulties due to these police expulsions.
Street food, a cultural heritage promoted for tourism
In this context of eviction, tourist districts occupy a unique place. In April 2017, in response to international media coverage of the ban on street vending, theTourism Authority of Thailand issued a statement certifying that two major tourist districts would not be affected. The statement also emphasized that "Bangkok would remain a leading destination for street food." The eviction of street vendors by the authorities is therefore not accompanied by a rejection of street food as such, quite the contrary. Indeed, the capital's street food has been renowned beyond Thailand's borders for several years. For example, the American television channel CNN has ranked Bangkok as the world's best city for street food for two years in a row. This is a definite asset for the political authorities, who are aware of the importance of tourism to the economy (38 million visitors in 2018, contributing around 15% of GDP).
Tourist districts are therefore designed to preserve what makes the capital so charming: its street food, in an international context that is generally favorable to street food. The Michelin star awarded in 2017 to a "street vendor," Jay Fai, symbolizes global recognition of the quality of this cuisine. However, although portrayed as an icon of street food, particularly by the Netflix series Street Food, Jay Fai is not representative of street vendors. She operates from a fixed stall and offers dishes at exorbitant prices for the local market. Her famous crab omelet costs twenty times more than the dishes offered by street vendors.
Policies regulating street food sales therefore tend to distinguish between street food on the one hand and street vendors on the other. Street food, promoted as cultural heritage, is valued and protected in tourist areas and new weekend night markets starting in December 2019, becoming a leisure activity designed for foreign visitors and the urban upper classes. Street food is set to continue in these neighborhoods, but its authorization goes hand in hand with its regulation.
Municipal authorities are thus participating in the creation of a certain type of street vending, which retains the appearance of traditional street food (same typical dishes, same stalls open to the outside, same appearance of simplicity and liveliness) but which differs from it due to the new constraints imposed on street vendors (reduction in sales areas and hours, increased health inspections, wearing specific clothing, for example). Informal street vendors, on the other hand, are being driven out of public spaces and face daily police repression. Therefore, the return of street vendors to the capital's tourist areas is less a reversal on the part of the local government than an attempt to control street vending, with a view to turning this cuisine into a marketing and leisure commodity rather than a daily food resource for residents.
Street vending, a target of city modernization policies
The main argument for banning street vending throughout the capital is the modernization of the city. This argument has been widely used throughout the history of street vending in cities around the world. This vision of modernity can be seen as early as the beginning ofthe 20th century in New York, for example, as analyzed by Daniel Bluestone. The authorities contrast street markets, considered chaotic and archaic, with specialty stores and shopping malls, showcases of clean and orderly modernity.
Similar arguments can be found today in various cities in Southeast and East Asia. These eviction procedures can be viewed through the lens of the concept of the “revenge city,” initially developed by Neil Smith to analyze gentrification processes in New York and Philadelphia. In Bangkok, this same framework highlights the class relations at play: if we can speak of "revengeful" urbanization here, it is because street vendors, often from the working classes and rural areas of the rest of the country, are targeted by the urban political elite that has been in power since the coup. Planners consider them an obstacle to both road and pedestrian traffic. The argument put forward is that of mobility, which justifies the removal of a practice associated with illegality, disorder, and even dirtiness (waste management). Street vendors are therefore considered undesirable in a public space planned first and foremost for the middle and upper classes, whether local or foreign.
Promoting "touristified" street food sales while banning daily food sales by city residents: this policy of eviction raises serious questions about fairness in access to food. Regulations governing public spaces tend to exclude Thailand's working classes, while reintegrating and reinterpreting practices that were customary for them.
This article is based on a study conducted as part of the Street Food research project funded by the CNRS and INRA.
Gwenn Pulliat, Geography Researcher, University of Montpellier and Carmen Dreysse, Research Intern at CNRS, UMR Art-Dev, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.