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Deck 04 · Mar 2026 · 15 slides

Empowering the Street

Thought piece

An unsolicited framework for street vendor zones, starting from a Weligama roti seller with a world-class product and no fixed address.

Directed and edited by me, with AI tools.

A roti vendor in Weligama has a product tourists cross town for, and no address, no bank account and no security against being moved on. Most cities treat street vendors as a cleanliness problem. Bangkok’s clearances show what that costs: the tourists went elsewhere.

I framed it as missing infrastructure, not a vendor problem. The proposal is an Autonomous Market Zone. Vendors register and govern themselves as a peer group, share water and sanitation facilities, and trade under an authentic local brand. Government enables the zone and a cooperative runs it, building on the Sri Lanka Women’s Development Services Cooperative Society (founded in 1989, with more than 25,000 members) rather than inventing a new body. Peer loans replace predatory lending, and a vendor-funded audit keeps the money visible. Zones are placed where footfall already is, near transport, with space reserved for new entrants. Weligama is the proposed pilot.

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