Cecilia H. Giusti, Maria Paula Perez, Irayda Ruiz Bode, Mabel Daniza Hernandez
This chapter presents an urban intervention in Guatemala, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Like many other large cities in Latin America, the main street in downtown Guatemala City was occupied by “informal” street vendors, and the city tried once and again to expel them and “clean” the city. After long struggles with local authorities, 677 informal vendors reached an agreement with the city and were peacefully relocated in 2010 to a nearby ad hoc location, the El Amate market. El Amate is still functioning, the streets are being beautified, and new investment is transforming downtown Guatemala City. Meanwhile, vendors are still “informal,” poverty is still a reality, and the city is only nominally benefiting from new private investment. Our research reveals the presence of a progressive young group of urbanists who understood the need to include street vendors in the envisioning of the city. Instead of fighting with them, the city invited street vendors to participate in the negotiation. Two facts seem to be crucial for the relative success of this intervention: first, El Amate remained downtown; and second, the city added a budget line providing basic services for vendors. Instead of treating informality as a problem to be eliminated, vendors could be perceived as participants in both the economy and city life. This urban intervention highlights how a municipality in a poor country dealt with this fact. Street vendors are here to stay and should be seen as contributors to better cities. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, College of Architecture, College Station, 77843-3137, TX, United States; A & M University, Langford Architecture Center, A-202 G, 3137 TAMU, College Station, 77843-3137, TX, United States; Hobby School of Public Affairs, University of Houston, Houston, TX, United States; School of Architecture, University of San Carlos, Philippines
