Urbanistas Meet Urban Vendors

The Urbanistas blog describes the women moving around in downtown Port of Spain and focuses on the advantages and the difficulties of navigating the space in the female body. The urban vendors in Trinidad (UVTT) blog look at the vendors specifically in the same space and breaks down the nature and feel of the space they exist in and the struggle to move product, compete with other vendors, exercise ones rights to exist there and resist imposers on those rights and the threat that globalisation places on their livelihood. In our analysis of the space we see it through the eyes of the woman whilst the UVTT blog does more of a class based analysis of the socioeconomics involved in street vending, occasionally making comparisons to cities in St. Vincent. An important aspect, the comparison, as it foregrounds the discussion upon what an image for a “Caribbean City” would consist of. This is a very important discussion in the conceptualisation of the Caribbean region and starting the informed discussion on how we can develop with the best interest of the region in mind. It was also very important to talk about how globalisation affected the city vendors increasing the difficulties of survival as the local vendors, in addition to competing with each other they now face even greater adversaries in the form of imported products by major distributors that are more cost effective and convenient and while they may be able to continue to cater to the working class poor persons this audience just may not be enough to sustain their businesses and thus their livelihoods.