VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

In Jakarta, Indonesia, street vending is widely acknowledged as an enabler of economic growth. However, despite its contribution, the authorities still do not recognise its significance and continuously develop urban strategies to prosecute the practice. This situation ensures that street vendors develop spatial strategies that allow them to operate inconspicuously to make ends meet while facilitating the citizens’ needs for affordable everyday items. This paper argues that street vending is a creative intervention—a form of interior urbanism, a micro-scale intervention that allows temporary inhabitation by interrupting the existing in a meaningful and non-confrontational manner. It domesticates the city and projects familiarity through its design, encouraging a human dimension to the usually sterile environment. To examine and understand this aspect of street vending, this paper proposes an approach called interior writing–a spin on autoethnography that critically assesses the intimate experience of observing, interacting and participating in street vending activities during walking inquiries on three of Jakarta’s streets. This approach allows the description of interior situations beyond convention, gives access to an intimate reading of urban issues and provides opportunities to reflect on how the interior and the urban influence and shape each other. As a result, this reading generated the typology of interior urbanism—the variety of interior strategies utilised by street vendors—that allow us to understand the socio-spatial significance that makes street vending a crucial feature for inclusive urban liveability that has the potential to soften Jakarta’s edge and makes it habitable, especially for the underprivileged.