Licensing of street vendors drove commerce indoors off public streets
Evidence
While retail buying and selling remains very much a public activity, it has largely been moved indoors, off the streets and walkways. Certainly much of this movement is due to technological innovations, economic pressures, and the general rationalization of business, but the practice of licensing, and thereby controlling the numbers of street vendors, was undoubtedly of some import as well. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 371
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to how preindustrial public squares hosted open-air markets that Lofland describes elsewhere; licensing is a control mechanism distinct from the purely economic or technological.