Hostile Design and the ‘Smart’ City: How the Beautification of the City Ruins the Working Poor

As we redesign our streets, vendors are being pushed out, and street-level livelihoods are slowly being squeezed out.

Paper Rights, Bulldozers in the Streets India already has a legal framework to safeguard street vendors.

In 1989, in Sodan Singh v. NDMC, the Supreme Court reaffirmed street vending as a fundamental right to practise a trade under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.

Take Back the Street Street vending is an integral part of everyday life in Indian cities.

Sustaining close to ten million people across the country, street vendors sell affordable vegetables, cooked meals, tea and household supplies for daily-wage urban families.