GOOD PRACTICE
Bogor, Indonesia, demonstrates a transformative model for integrating informal food vendors into formal urban planning. Through the Development, Planning, Research, and Innovation Agency, the city has established 14 culinary zones, providing 5,000 vendors with legal status and infrastructure. This framework utilizes cooperatives to grant informal actors access to social welfare, health insurance, and democratic governance. While digital integration and tourism have bolstered market reach, significant gaps remain: 7,000 vendors lack formal protection, and fewer than 50% of kiosks meet sanitation standards. This highlights the ongoing need for municipal investment to ensure urban food security and systemic resilience.
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Bogor, a city famous for its vibrant street food and local specialties like Toge Goreng and Ubi Bakar Cilembu, serves as an inspiring example of how municipal governments can formalise and support informal food vendor networks.
This initiative preserves cultural culinary traditions, enhances food system resilience, and contributes to more sustainable local food systems. Through the efforts of Bogor's Development, Planning, Research, and Innovation Agency, the city established 14 officially recognised street food vendor zones and permanent culinary centres. This framework provides vendors with legal operating spaces, basic infrastructure, and formal business registration, supported by private sector donations. Currently, over 5,000 vendors are registered within this structure. This formalisation is transformative for vendor livelihoods. Vendors gain access to crucial social welfare benefits, including health insurance and pension funds, typically unavailable to informal actors, through their cooperatives. These cooperatives have elected governing bodies, ensuring compliance with municipal regulations and establishing community-based democratic governance. Municipal recognition also reduces vulnerability to eviction and enhances collective bargaining power.
The integration of street food culture with tourism is a key objective, promoted through food festivals supported by the government and the Ministry of Cooperatives. This effort simultaneously celebrates food heritage and creates market opportunities. Furthermore, digital platforms like Go-Jek and GrabFood have provided expanded market access, reducing dependency on foot traffic while maintaining vendor connections to local communities. The city’s approach successfully integrates traditional street food culture with contemporary urban planning, food safety standards, and social protection. The street food system also plays a crucial role in urban food security, offering affordable, accessible meals—with 99% of schoolchildren purchasing their daily meals from vendors.
However, challenges remain: approximately 7,000 vendors still operate outside the formal structures, facing eviction risks and lacking social protection. Moreover, limited infrastructure development means less than 50% of kiosks have adequate access to water and sanitation facilities, highlighting the need for enhanced municipal investment.
