“If you want to seed a place with activity, put out food.” This is how William Whyte begins his discussion of food vendors in his 1980 groundbreaking work on urban development, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Using time-lapse photography, Whyte systematically studied plazas and parks in New York, showing what could be done to make them more vibrant and functional. He describes lifeless plazas transformed by the introduction of a single food stand and the feedback loop of food vendors drawn to active areas, which in turn become more lively, drawing more vendors. And he describes the draconian regulations placed on vendors at that time in New York, backed up by the force of police sweeps in popular locations. Whyte helped ease some of those regulations, and eventually this more welcoming stance migrated to other cities.

Thirty years later, numerous studies have been conducted, with cities like New York, Portland and Austin functioning as large-scale laboratories. A book reviewing the best food trucks in America is slated to be released in April.

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