Thanks for this! I too am often amazed at how simple yet effective food can be for bringing life to a space. Your stories bring a couple of places to mind for me: a taco stand I saw at the Fruitvale BART station in San Francisco; a fruit vendor outside a secluded subway station in New York; and the permanent fixture of fruit vendors in a bus loop in Hong Kong.

One challenge for food trucks is balancing the places we want them to be, with making sure that they get enough foot traffic to be economically viable — and that’s where transit, cycling and walking (and therefore some level of density) really shine, because the impulse purchase of eating from a food cart is much better suited to travel patterns by those modes than by car.

Turning a park into a more “neutral” and welcoming space with a food cart is an intriguing idea!

Karen