Street Vending in the United States: A Unique Dataset from a Survey of Street Vendors in America’s Largest Cities

Dick M. Carpenter II
Institute for Justice and University of Colorado

The data described in this article come from an original survey of street vendors in the 50 largest cities in the United States. One of the most persistent, although little understood, features of the urban American environment, street vending is defined as “the retail or wholesale trading of goods and services in streets and other related public axes such as alleyways, avenues and boulevards” (Bromley, 2000: 1). Some vending occurs in a fixed location, whereas other vending is mobile and makes use of carts, tricycles, or motor vehicles. Vending may be practiced full time, part time, seasonally, or occasionally by businesses ranging from one-person micro-enterprises through numerous forms of partnerships, family businesses, franchisees, pieceworkers, and wageworkers of brick-and-mortar firms (Bromley, 2000).