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How does the ambulant street trader manage to find his place in urban Istanbul? Being on the move or being stationary depends upon the time of day, on the throughput of people in certain places, or on the season. We suggest that the pattern of moving and of being stationary is the key to understanding territorial strategies. This paper shows, on the basis of qualitative fieldwork in Istanbul, that spacio-temporal logics underlie the use of urban areas by ambulant street traders. To what extent do they explain the quality of social relations? We construct a typology of street traders in order to describe the important and complex relation between the degree of spatial mobility and the degree of social legitimacy: one can suggest that mobility increases social legitimacy and being stationary secures it; one can suggest that being stationary brings anonymity and mobility is flight from authority.