Gentrified street vendors

The street vendor above in the plaid shirt stares intently off into the distance pondering on some vague thought as he waits for people to come by his stall. Maybe it's a thought of longing and the desire to be more than just a street vendor. 

Gentrification occurs when wealthier people purchase or rent properties in low/middle income communities, they transforming these neighborhoods into “middle class residential and or commercial” zones.  Gentrification has been linked to “economic processes, the role of human agency and consumer preferences”. (Hall 2012). 

The definition used here defines the process for housing. You must be wondering where I am going with this but, have you ever considered that street vendors can be "gentrified" into a higher sort of state where they move from the streets to the walk in malls, this is now their indoor "sidewalks." 

Gentrification is a movement, a movement for betterment. All street vendors in the informal economy wants to be part of the formal economy and run their own store fronts. 

These malls that they become a part of are a form of agglomeration, street vending is also a form of agglomeration but it's still in the initial stages. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, agglomeration economies are the benefits that come when firms and people locate near one another together in cities and industrial cluster. 

In time everything would change for the better.

Reference

Hall, Tim and Heather Barrett. "Urban Geography." 264. London and New York: Routledge, 2012.

Glaeser, Edward L. Agglomeration Economics. The University of Chicago Press, 2010. Accessed March 30, 2014. http://www.nber.org/chapters/c7977.pdf.