Fighting for space in Mexico City:
Street vendors and urban public space
In Luchando por un espacio en la Ciudad de México, urban scholar Verónica Crossa examines the struggle over street vending and public space in Mexico City. Rather than treating vendors simply as part of an “informal economy” or as obstacles to orderly public space, Crossa looks closely at the relationships, negotiations, conflicts, and everyday practices through which vendors make a place for themselves in the city.
The book explores what happens when government efforts to regulate, beautify, or rehabilitate public spaces collide with the people whose livelihoods depend on occupying them. In doing so, Crossa complicates the familiar distinction between formal and informal city life and asks a more fundamental question: who has the right to use public space, and who gets to decide what appropriate use looks like?
Published by El Colegio de México in 2018, the book draws together questions of street labor, urban governance, inequality, and belonging—showing public space not as a finished product, but as something continually negotiated by the people who use it.
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