Explaining and tackling the informal economy: an evaluation of competing perspectives
This paper provides an evidence-based evaluation of the competing ways of explaining and tackling the informal economy. Conventionally, participants have been viewed as rational economic actors who engage in the … Continue reading
Reappropriating Public Space in Nanchang, China: A Study of Informal Street Vendors
Since China’s shift to market socialism, many marginalized by this process work as informal street vendors where they reappropriate public space in order to survive―a practice at odds with urban … Continue reading
Addressing Informality in Cities
Informality is a key contributor to successful emerging economies while on the other hand it drives socio-spatial inequality. Understanding and addressing the dynamics of informality is therefore strategic. This policy … Continue reading
Data Gathering and Justice in the Urban Informal Sector
This case considers the challenges faced by civil society organisations (CSOs) in gathering and applying data in urban informal contexts. Given that one billion people are estimated to live in … Continue reading
The Commodification of Public Spaces
This study focuses on the mechanisms and institutions for the governance of public spaces on Khao San Road, Bangkok, Thailand. Khao San offers immense opportunity for vendors, as it is … Continue reading
How the urban poor define and measure food security
Urban food security, or its lack, is attracting growing interest in global policy debates. Glaringly missing in these conversations, however, are the voices of the urban poor. To fill this … Continue reading
The street market as animated space
“This ethnography of Chapel Market in Islington uncovers an animated space replete with its own actors, history, currents of activity, and interrelations with authorities and with government. There is a … Continue reading
Assembling street vending
Current scholarship on street vending in cities of the global south have mainly focused on street vendors and their politics of resistance against the state’s revanchist and exclusionary policies. This … Continue reading
