How do vendors decide where to sit when there is no official vending plan?

They work it out among themselves, and the result is not chaos. It is order that grew rather than order that was drawn. In market after market, vendors settle who sits where without a written rule in sight.

They sit where customers already pass: bus stops, school gates, temple doors, office clusters, metro exits. Similar vendors gather together because buyers like choice. The tea stall sits by the repair shop because both serve the same waiting customers. The flower seller sits by the temple because that is where flowers are bought.

Seniority counts. A vendor who has held a spot for years carries a recognised claim, and newcomers negotiate around him. Sometimes the day itself gets shared: the vegetable seller takes the pitch in the morning, the snack seller in the evening.

None of this is perfect. These arrangements can shut out newcomers, favour the old hands, or run on quiet payments. But they hold knowledge no official plan can easily capture: where people walk, when the crowd builds, which spots stay safe, where customers halt, and how the street turns over through the day.

That is why the informal order should not be waved away as disorder. More often, it is the street solving, on its own, a problem the planner finds hard.