The Management of Street Vending in Public Spaces in Indonesia: How Do Regulations Facilitate Self-Organising Communities?

Munirwan, Hafi (2025) The Management of Street Vending in Public Spaces in Indonesia: How Do Regulations Facilitate Self-Organising Communities? PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

Street vending is a common practice in virtually all cities, particularly in the Global South, where it primarily operates informally and accounts for a higher proportion of economic activity compared to the Global North. Hence, in the Global South, public policy often views street vending as a form of disorder and has primarily sought to ban it due to its unregulated nature. Among the contemporary debates in planning literature is the type of spatial regulations for managing urban space, with scholars exploring the use of flexible land use instruments, developed based on qualitative principles applicable to all places and agents, as an alternative to conventional land use instruments, which are considered too rigid. This idea aligns with the growing understanding of self-organisation as a fundamental driving force behind urban transformation. This research aims to understand how different types of regulations interact with the selforganising behaviour of street vendors to produce better public spaces. For this reason, this study examines two cities in Indonesia where municipalities adopt different policies to regulate street vending. The municipality of Bandar Lampung adopts rigid land use instruments that predetermine street vending as illegal and seeks to move street vendors to the public market. On the other hand, the municipality of Bandung adopts some forms of flexible rules, allowing people to transform and manage street vending sites as long as they align with the municipality’s restrictions. The study is based on evidence derived from national and local laws and regulations, official and media reports, as well as semi-structured interviews with 30 informants from diverse groups, including government officials, community representatives, and street vendors, also followed by field observations. The study found that the management of street vending works better when flexible regulations are adopted, as they facilitate the self-organising capacity of street vendors, thereby allowing the municipality not only to achieve the objective of securing public order for a long period but also to empower street vendors. However, flexible regulations are not a panacea and only work when the fundamental needs of street vendors are addressed, also when both the municipality and street vendors trust each other and are willing to share their interests. Furthermore, the two cases being examined draw on the street vendors’ self-organising mechanisms, which are driven by street vendors’ economic interests and by collective ideas that integrate both economic and public interests.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Divisions:	Faculty of Science & Engineering Faculty of Science & Engineering > School of Environmental Sciences Faculty of Science & Engineering > School of Environmental Sciences > Geography and Planning
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	09 Feb 2026 16:47
Last Modified:	09 Feb 2026 16:47
DOI:	10.17638/03195324
Supervisors:	Dembski, Sebastian Dunning, Richard
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3195324
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