Place-making in urban street vending: interactions between formal and informal practices

This paper examines street vending activities as a place-making activity in Huifang, Xi’an, China, focusing on how formal and informal practices entangle to shape the use and transformation of public space. While this entanglement has predominantly been theorised at a structural or conceptual level, and the relationship between urban management officers (Chengguan) and street vendors in China is still widely framed as conflictual, how it operates in everyday spatial practice remains underexamined. Drawing on qualitative methods across three analytically distinct sites, the paper analyses how vendors, residents and local government actors (urban management officers and community service centre officers) negotiate public space through street vending activities. Structured through five literature-derived analytical dimensions (temporality, collaboration, inclusivity, creativity and sense of place), the analysis shows how negotiated governance, operating through unwritten rules, selective enforcement and everyday accommodation, produces distinct forms of negotiated place-making: grassroots (Xicang), tourism-driven (Beiyuanmen) and heritage-focused (Xuexixiang). The paper contributes by operationalising negotiated place-making as a transferable analytical framework for examining how formal–informal entanglements become visible in everyday spatial practices. The findings qualify the dominant conflict narrative surrounding urban management officers (Chengguan) and street vendors, contributing to debates on place-making, informality and governance.