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In the city centers of Quito (Ecuador) and Cape Town (South Africa), street trading activities are being increasingly regularized. This is done primarily by forcing the traders to operate in formal markets. In both cities, this process is linked to the rise of entrepreneurial agendas of urban regeneration. In critical neomarxist urban theory, these movements tend to be construed in terms of conflict, domination and power structures and they are discussed in reference to the debate on the neoliberalisation of urban policies. Drawing on a foucauldian understanding of power and of neoliberalisation as a process of governmentality, this paper analyses the socio-spatial reordering of street traders’ activities once they have been regularized. Instead of focusing on the violence that is exercised against them during the regularization itself, we look at the reordering of practices and the reshaping of representations once regularization has happened. We argue that the technical tools and planning formulas of the “street market” and of the “mall” act as dispositives of power that reshape the street traders’ identities, practices and values, aligning them with the entrepreneurial municipal project and with the municipal vision of their contribution to the entrepreneurial city. The paper shows how this alignment is realized through spatial discipline, intensified social control and an increased bureaucratization of the traders’ practices. It thus contributes to reframe our understanding of the power relations at stake under neoliberal urban regeneration. In the last section of the paper, we discuss the ambiguous effects of this process: it generates both conducts of compliance and practices of transgression; it fosters an increased sense of individual responsibility among the traders; it nurtures political and social expectations toward the local State. |
