'Out of place' in the city : the users' evaluation of street vendors in Jakarta at day and night.

The temporal dynamics of the city involve the presence of temporary elements that are unplanned and unexpected. Yet the presence of such elements is contrary to the attempts to achieve harmony and perfection of 'ideal city', and they become 'out of place' elements that need to be rejected. This thesis is about the rejection of street vendors as temporary elements in the city. The great increase of street vendors in many countries has inevitably changed the visual image of the cities. Their presence has continuously become the subject of debates, whether they should be maintained or banished from urban areas. However, there was a lack of evidence on the users' view regarding the street vendors as rejected urban elements. This research explores the users' evaluation towards the presence of street vendors in urban places in Jakarta, Indonesia through a preference approach. The objectives are to examine: 1) the extent to which the users perceive the street vendors as 'out of place' elements in urban places; 2) the change of the users' evaluation of street vendors as 'out of place' elements in urban places from day time to night time; and 3) the extent to which the presence of street vendors as 'out of place' elements contributes to the users' general evaluation of urban places. The methods combine open-ended questionnaire with a standardised rating scale to elicit the users' responses towards slides of urban scenes with street vendors. The research found that users' evaluation towards the presence of street vendors as 'out of place' elements is not absolute; the street vendors are not always perceived negatively by the users. In particular, the users' evaluation of street vendors as 'out of place' changed from day time to night time, and their presence were perceived as less 'out of place' at night time. The research confirmed the important role of street vendors as temporary elements in the users' general evaluation of urban environment. The findings provide some implications for planning process to incorporate the presence of street vendors in the cities. They suggest some possibilities to develop ways to make their presence' in place', rather than taking for granted that their presence is 'out of place'.