Informality is a present and enduring feature in cities across the Global South, often serving as a coping strategy for communities that are unable to function within formal regulatory systems. Yet its centrality to urban life and relevance as an adaptive self-organised response to exclusion remains poorly understood in policy and planning interventions. The IHS cluster on informality seeks to further unpack the multifaceted and complex nature of informality and serves as an interdisciplinary hub for research, education, and engagement on urban informality.
The cluster aims to consolidate and expand IHS’s growing body of work on urban informality as a critical and growing area for participatory development globally. It brings together interdisciplinary expertise to explore informality’s multiple paradigms found in housing settlements, labour, land use and tenure, governance, and livelihoods. It also questions and challenges dominant narratives, contributes and advances new theories, and promotes grounded research that informs and supports curriculum development, advisory work and advocacy for inclusive policies.
Practically, the cluster aims to serve as a platform for trans-disciplinary collaboration that engages informal communities, practitioners, researchers, civil society and both the public and private sectors to build strategic partnerships that enable/support innovation, strengthen recognition and enhance resilience within informal systems globally.
