Urban Informality and the Built Environment
This open access book looks at how the built environment allows different urban processes to interact and how it groups elements together. We propose to explore urban informality by analysing … Continue reading
The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Vol 3
For a post-human hitchhiker, human life – with its anxiety, ageing, illness and constant need for problem-solving – may look unviable. Yet, for humans, the life struggle is softened by … Continue reading
Migrant waste collectors in Thailand’s informal economy: Mapping class relations
Recent scholarship on primitive accumulation and deagrarianisation in the global South has addressed a decline in formal employment prospects, leaving most ex-peasants (and their heirs) struggling to earn a livelihood … Continue reading
African urbanisation at the confluence of informality and climate change
(Temporary open access) Africa contributes the least to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it faces climate change’s harshest consequences. Ramifications of climate change pose daunting multi-scalar urban challenges, specifically because … Continue reading
Writing Across Contexts: Urban Informality and the State in Guinea-Bissau, Estonia, and Germany
Urban research has long related informality to a lack of state capacity or a failure of institutions. This assumption not only fails to account for the heterogeneous institutional relations in … Continue reading
Vertical informality: The case of Kufr Aqab in East Jerusalem
This paper explores the phenomenon of vertical informality, an under-studied form of informal housing at large scale, and the role of developers within vertical informality. We investigate the case of … Continue reading
Informal work in sub-Saharan Africa – Dead end or stepping-stone?
Despite rapid economic growth in recent decades, informality remains a persistent phenomenon in the labor markets of many low- and middle-income countries. A key issue in this regard concerns the … Continue reading
