【Text/Observer Network Columnist Wei Chenglin】
Recently, the "stall economy" that has added fireworks to the city has caught fire, and more and more cities are actively planning stalls to increase the employment and income opportunities of the population. There are also local urban management who take the initiative to call out vendors to come out and set up stalls. The cat-and-mouse relationship between urban management vendors in the past has now become a partnership, and the "stall economy" has become a "panacea" for enlivening the market economy, coordinating the relationship between the government and citizens, and adding luster to big cities.
However, since the "stall economy" has such a wonderful use, why do first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen clearly state that the stall economy is not suitable for them? In fact, the stall economy has an important impact on people's livelihood employment, life, and urban street public space governance, and the rational response of Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities has undoubtedly cooled down the overheated "stall economy".
The stalls are not something you can set up if you want to
As a grassroots economy, the stall economy has the characteristics of low cost and low threshold, usually the urban poor and weak population (mainly the elderly and the disabled), the small businesses operated by the urban peasant groups on street corners, roadsides and densely populated hospitals and supermarkets, and their service objects are relatively fixed and limited.
Obviously, this kind of occupation of the road is often managed and discouraged by the urban management and food and drug supervision departments, but in the long-term management interaction process, the vendors have a conscious awareness of the urban governance norms, business scope, business time and space, they will not affect the operation of supermarkets, but also try to reduce the interference with the lives of citizens, but also pay attention to cooperation with the city management departments and sanitation departments, do a good job in surrounding health, higher-level inspection and other work.
However, the sudden economic policy of the local stall disrupted the profit-sharing order formed by the street society after long-term interaction. In fact, no matter how tightly controlled the state is, urban space will always have management gaps and omissions. If there is profitability here, there will be profit seekers flocking to it, and after a period of game, this profitable space is basically allocated, and each operator has a relatively suitable space and a relatively stable income. Outsiders who are not familiar with the world are easily squeezed out, and instead of profiting, they may lose money.
A member of the Wuhan urban management team told the author that in 2015, he and several colleagues wore civilian clothes to Wuhan Jiangtan to make a secret visit, and as a result, they were constantly excluded by the original vendors, they said: We have been here for several years, you want to move a place. In the end, they only got a stall in a sparsely populated area, and after a few days, not only did they not earn money, but they put in the labor cost, and the goods they imported could only be given to relatives and friends.
These illegal stallholders who have been "mixed" on the streets for a long time must not only mediate with government officials such as urban management, but also compete with newcomers, and even pay "management fees" to some local gray forces in order to maintain their unstable street business status. In those officially designated stall areas, stalls are already full, such as the laneway next to Jianghan Road Pedestrian Street.
The stall owner on Jianghan Road broadcast live while setting up the stall, picture source: Chutian Metropolis Daily
Around 2000, in order to solve the employment problem of poor urban families, the government set aside a public space next to the bustling street market, as a public welfare booth distributed to poor families to operate, but they either poor management or unwilling to operate and rent to others, the booth fee has risen from three or five thousand yuan per year to tens of thousands of yuan per year after many transfers, around 2013, there is a group of people specially "fried stalls", a stall of about 2 square meters was actually speculated to 50,000 yuan / year.
After the stall economy is "on fire", the phenomenon of stall resale will become more common, however, this is essentially the transformation of public space belonging to citizens into private property, and once it appears and is officially recognized or acquiesced, it will lay hidden dangers for future urban governance - and officials are likely to lose the legitimacy of governance in public space.
In the urban-rural junction zone and the urban village zone, due to the intersection of management departments and the complexity of physical space, it usually becomes a weak area of urban governance. The stall economy of these public spaces has always been very "hot", and almost all kinds of daily necessities and supplies needed by the surrounding residents can be obtained from the stalls. Order in this area is usually carried out by officially recognized social self-governing institutions or personnel, such as market management service teams organized by urban villages themselves, or by an influential person.
Obviously, whether it is the urban-rural interface, urban villages, or the bustling supermarkets, or the doors of parks, playgrounds, hospitals, colleges and other public places, there is no shortage of vendors, they have an extraordinary sensitivity to the surrounding environment and interest space, today's market economy or urban economic services are obviously in a saturated state, but due to the epidemic and temporarily retreated, or slightly sparse under the efforts of the city management department, but this latter kind of order balance is obviously in line with the interests of citizens and stalls.
In summary, the stall economy is a comprehensive problem of urban governance, social interest distribution and opportunity competition, and it seems that "simple and easy" stalls are obviously not placed if they want to.
Is the employment function of the stall economy really that big?
With the slogan of protecting people's livelihood and promoting employment, all localities actively promote the stall economy, and it is reported that the Chengdu Municipal Government has added 100,000 jobs through the stall economy. However, is the employment function of the stall economic policy really that big?
After careful observation, a considerable number of employed people in the government's statistics have been engaged in stall business activities for a long time, which is only to legalize the vendors who were illegally sold before; some operators have slightly increased the staff (usually hourly workers) due to the expansion of the business area in front of the store, and there are also some new people who have joined the ranks of street vendors, who have neither work experience nor their own business scope, which is a real new employment.
The question is whether the government's legalization of illegal vendors, with a share of the economy of existing market services, really promote employment. In view of the saturation of the formal economy and the informal stall economy, the current stall operators are still mainly experienced vendors and shop owners with store operations, and the highlights of the stall economy publicized in various places are basically based on these two.
New vendors ("new landlords") need to go through a market screening mechanism to truly become one of the first two, and ultimately achieve stable employment. Judging from the limited nature of urban public space, the chances of success of new landlords are in fact very small. Store operators firmly occupy the public space in front of their own stores, as a newly opened business activity space, product display and marketing space, will never give other vendors an opportunity, unless other vendors pay rent to them, but this will create the problem of privatization of public space. The old stall operators have basically occupied and divided the public space with the flow of interests in the city, and they do not allow new entrants to compete with them for profits, once the foreign vendors do not withdraw in time, it is easy to cause street conflicts, and the competition between economic and low-income groups will be more fierce.
So, how should the new land stall owners spawned by the policy be placed? There are two common official practices:
First, open up new business space for landlords to use, such as the temporary food street and small goods sales room in the supermarket plaza;
Second, vendors are allowed to operate autonomously in specific areas at specific times.
The first method is usually an officially licensed, privately managed model, with the actual occupants of public spaces in plazas such as supermarkets responsible for stalls, hygiene management and charging. The second way is the model of the officially licensed stall owners themselves.
It is undeniable that through official encouragement, the main body and scope of the stall economy have expanded, expanding the urban prosperity space and increasing the atmosphere of urban fireworks, but it has brought great economic pressure to store operators, especially non-first-floor store operators, because their passenger flow has been separated, but the rent, wages and other expenses have not decreased. If some store operators are unable to make ends meet, doesn't that cause unemployment and reduce the rent of shopping mall stores and government taxes?
The government's employment policy should not only ensure the quantity, but also ensure the quality, and must not opportunistically adopt a short-sighted employment policy, causing long-term people's livelihood and social problems. The new stallholder group stimulated by the current stall economy has obviously brought a dilemma to the government: the government either promotes its competition with store operators to share the profits, or allows its development to compete with the old stall owners, and in the case of limited market share, the former may trigger new unemployment, and the latter may trigger social conflicts. It is foreseeable that the drawbacks and social problems of the stall economy will become increasingly apparent, and what the government needs to do is to do a good job in policy response plans and long-term policy planning.
The stall economy inevitably affects the lives of surrounding residents, picture source: Xinhua Net
How to defend urban public space?
No policy can take its course out of the nature of urban space. Urban public space is the space of political order, the space of social interaction, the space of economic benefit distribution and the living space of the people. The multiple attributes of urban space imply different needs of countries and social groups. Clean and orderly urban public space is a goal pursued by metropolitan governments around the world for many years, which is in line with the interests of urban citizens' lives, urban business environment and brand image protection. The long-term private occupiers of public space have influenced the public interest to a certain extent, so we have developed an urban management system to defend urban public space.
Obviously, the stall economy is impacting the original street order and management system, and further highlights the differentiated interests of different groups such as citizens, stall owners, and store operators. Compared with the convenience and cheap stalls, the vast majority of urban residents prefer clean, quiet and orderly public spaces and living environments.
Therefore, after the stall economy was on fire, complaints about the activities of the stalls were also on fire, and many citizens reported that the operators of the stalls disturbed the people, the noise disturbed the people, polluted the environment, obstructed traffic, and so on. As a result, the government allowed stalls to be set up, and citizens complained that the stalls affected their lives; the government did not allow stalls, and some citizens said that local officials violated the central policy; and the different reactions of the citizens to the same incident made the metropolitan government deeply involved in the contradiction of serving the people.
What is more difficult is whether the original urban management system norms should be abandoned. How to face the stall demands of special groups such as the disabled, ethnic minorities, foreigners, urban low-income households, etc.? How to understand and deal with the transfer of booths at high prices in public spaces? How to establish the rules and legitimacy of public space governance?
The fundamental demand of urban governance is to ensure the publicity and public order of public space, so as not to fall into the government, citizens or special interest groups. From this perspective, we should express our admiration for cities that have not followed the trend of the stall economy, and we are also worried about the economic policies of local stalls that do not have long-term institutional planning. After the identity, business space and scope of the stall owners are officially recognized, will it destroy the legitimacy and governance performance of urban governance over the years, and how should the municipal government maintain street order in the future?
The author believes that the government's recognition of the stall economy does not mean that anyone can set up stalls anywhere, nor does it mean that the original urban governance system is abandoned. In the face of this hot topic of national discussion, local governments especially need to accurately locate the political, economic and social functions of urban public space, rationally lay out urban commercial services and people's livelihood services, and objectively evaluate and manage the stall economy with the goal of building a harmonious and orderly public space, which is more conducive to the people's livelihood needs and urban governance construction than the "heat-generating" and "gusty wind" to promote the stall economy.
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