Keeping space public: Times Square (New York) and the Senegalese peddlers

Abstract

This paper explores the public nature of Times Square's physical and represented (TV, internet, press) spaces through an analysis of the techniques used by Senegalese male peddlers to sell souvenirs to the visiting tourists. Whereas a number of scholars denounce the Disneyfication of Times Square, in other words its privatization, the observation of the peddlers shows that there is an almost self-regulated social order of the flow escaping the control of the pseudo-public institution in charge of Times Square, the Business Improvement District. On the other hand, the difficulties encountered by the vendors also reveal another Times Square, less public, constituted by the accumulation of images captured by the finance and media companies settled in the office towers. This "clean and safe" pseudo-private space (Mitchell and Staeheli 2006) cannot tolerate the presence of the vendors, thus pushing them to the blind spots of the site. It nevertheless relies on the dynamics of the flow, thus preserving a place for the vendors and the public nature of the physical space of Times Square. But how long can this compromise work?

Keywords

• public space
• ambulantism
• Times Square
• street vending
• peddler
• urban flow