[PDF] Street Commerce eBook

Author : Andres Sevtsuk
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 20,56 MB
Release : 2020-06-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0812297083

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A comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in planning for and facilitating successful street commerce Street commerce has gained prominence in urban areas, where demographic shifts such as increasing numbers of single people and childless "empty nesters," along with technological innovations enabling greater flexibility of work locations and hours, have changed how people shop and dine out. Contemporary city dwellers are demanding smaller-scale stores located in public spaces that are accessible on foot or by public transit. At the same time, the emergence of online retail undermines both the dominance and viability of big-box discount businesses and drives brick and mortar stores to focus as much on the experience of shopping as on the goods and services sold. Meanwhile, in many developing countries, the bulk of urban retail activity continues to take place on the street, even as new car-oriented shopping centers are on the rise. In light of such trends, street commerce will play an important role in twenty-first-century cities, particularly in producing far-reaching benefits for the environment and local communities. Although street commerce is deeply intertwined with myriad contemporary urban visions and planning goals—walkability, quality of life, inclusion, equity, and economic resilience—it has rarely been the focus of systematic research and informed practice. In Street Commerce, Andres Sevtsuk presents a comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in implementing successful street commerce. Drawing on economic theory, urban design principles, regulatory policies, and merchant organization models, he conceptualizes key problems and offers innovative solutions. He provides a range of examples from around the world to detail how different cities and communities have bolstered and reinvigorated their street commerce. According to Sevtsuk, successful street commerce can only be achieved when the private sector, urban policy makers, planners, and the public are equipped with the relevant knowledge and tools to plan and regulate it.

Author : Andres Sevtsuk
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 34,53 MB
Release : 2020-06-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0812252209

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A comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in planning for and facilitating successful street commerce Street commerce has gained prominence in urban areas, where demographic shifts such as increasing numbers of single people and childless "empty nesters," along with technological innovations enabling greater flexibility of work locations and hours, have changed how people shop and dine out. Contemporary city dwellers are demanding smaller-scale stores located in public spaces that are accessible on foot or by public transit. At the same time, the emergence of online retail undermines both the dominance and viability of big-box discount businesses and drives brick and mortar stores to focus as much on the experience of shopping as on the goods and services sold. Meanwhile, in many developing countries, the bulk of urban retail activity continues to take place on the street, even as new car-oriented shopping centers are on the rise. In light of such trends, street commerce will play an important role in twenty-first-century cities, particularly in producing far-reaching benefits for the environment and local communities. Although street commerce is deeply intertwined with myriad contemporary urban visions and planning goals—walkability, quality of life, inclusion, equity, and economic resilience—it has rarely been the focus of systematic research and informed practice. In Street Commerce, Andres Sevtsuk presents a comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in implementing successful street commerce. Drawing on economic theory, urban design principles, regulatory policies, and merchant organization models, he conceptualizes key problems and offers innovative solutions. He provides a range of examples from around the world to detail how different cities and communities have bolstered and reinvigorated their street commerce. According to Sevtsuk, successful street commerce can only be achieved when the private sector, urban policy makers, planners, and the public are equipped with the relevant knowledge and tools to plan and regulate it.

Author : Barak Richman
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 41,69 MB
Release : 2017-06-19
Category : Art
ISBN : 0674972171

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In Stateless Commerce, Barak Richman uses the colorful case study of the diamond industry to explore how ethnic trading networks operate and why they persist in the twenty-first century. How, for example, does the 47th Street diamond district in midtown Manhattan—surrounded by skyscrapers and sophisticated financial institutions—continue to thrive as an ethnic marketplace that operates like a traditional bazaar? Conventional models of economic and technological progress suggest that such primitive commercial networks would be displaced by new trading paradigms, yet in the heart of New York City the old world persists. Richman’s explanation is deceptively simple. Far from being an anachronism, 47th Street’s ethnic enclave is an adaptive response to the unique pressures of the diamond industry. Ethnic trading networks survive because they better fulfill many functions usually performed by state institutions. While the modern world rests heavily on lawyers, courts, and state coercion, ethnic merchants regularly sell goods and services by relying solely on familiarity, trust, and community enforcement—what economists call “relational exchange.” These commercial networks insulate themselves from the outside world because the outside world cannot provide those assurances. Extending the framework of transactional cost and organizational economics, Stateless Commerce draws on rare insider interviews to explain why personal exchange succeeds, even as most global trade succumbs to the forces of modernization, and what it reveals about the limitations of the modern state in governing the economy.

Author : Julie L. Holcomb
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 14,25 MB
Release : 2016-08-23
Category : History
ISBN : 1501706624

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How can the simple choice of a men’s suit be a moral statement and a political act? When the suit is made of free-labor wool rather than slave-grown cotton. In Moral Commerce, Julie L. Holcomb traces the genealogy of the boycott of slave labor from its seventeenth-century Quaker origins through its late nineteenth-century decline. In their failures and in their successes, in their resilience and their persistence, antislavery consumers help us understand the possibilities and the limitations of moral commerce. Quaker antislavery rhetoric began with protests against the slave trade before expanding to include boycotts of the use and products of slave labor. For more than one hundred years, British and American abolitionists highlighted consumers’ complicity in sustaining slavery. The boycott of slave labor was the first consumer movement to transcend the boundaries of nation, gender, and race in an effort by reformers to change the conditions of production. The movement attracted a broad cross-section of abolitionists: conservative and radical, Quaker and non-Quaker, male and female, white and black. The men and women who boycotted slave labor created diverse, biracial networks that worked to reorganize the transatlantic economy on an ethical basis. Even when they acted locally, supporters embraced a global vision, mobilizing the boycott as a powerful force that could transform the marketplace. For supporters of the boycott, the abolition of slavery was a step toward a broader goal of a just and humane economy. The boycott failed to overcome the power structures that kept slave labor in place; nonetheless, the movement’s historic successes and failures have important implications for modern consumers.