ABSTRACT
Street vending offers migrants in Shanghai an entrepreneurial businesses opportunity with minimal startup fees. This low-end commercial activity produces cheap and convenient goods while also providing a crucial contribution to the culture of the street. Yet Shanghai’s development model has tended to embrace a top-down gentrification process, which empowers a sometimes-violent enforcement that targets mobile vendors. All over the city, street markets are being replaced with shopping malls. This chapter details a project “Moveable Feasts” (https://www.sh-streetfood.org/">www.sh-streetfood.org/) that is dedicated to researching, celebrating and preserving Shanghai’s street food. The project seeks to reimagine the twenty-first-century city coexisting with the markets and the culture of the street.
