| Summary: |
A street vendor pushes a cart with ice popsicles down the sidewalk.
Periodically she rings a little bell to make her presence known. At the
street corner, some day laborers solicit work by raising “ labor for hire â€
signs each time a motorist drives by. In the next block, passersby gaze
at the array of clothing, tools, and toys displayed on the front lawn of
a home. Some stop, check them out, talk with the homeowner who has
organized the sale, and buy an item. In another block of single-family
homes, an extended family has converted their garage into an unpermitted
apartment to expand the available living space. Such informality,
comprised of a multitude of activities taking place beyond the regulations
of the state, is typically associated with cities of the developing
world. But the neighborhood scene just described is not from Quito,
Lagos, or Ahmedabad but from a city in the United States, one of the
most industrialized, regulated, and economically developed regions of
the planet.
There is ample evidence that informality is an integral and growing
part of cities in the developed world. Partly a result of globalization,
deregulation, and increasing immigration flows, partly a response to
economic instability and increasing unemployment and underemployment,
and partly because of the inadequacy of existing regulations to
address the complexity and heterogeneity of contemporary multicultural
living, informal activities have proliferated in U.S. cities and are clearly
reflected in their built environment. In the United States and other
regions of the affluent and developed world, however, informal urbanism
is understudied and often misunderstood. Planners and policymakers
usually see informal activities at best as unorganized, marginal enterprises
that should be ignored, and at worst as unlawful activities that
should be stopped and prosecuted. Similarly, the physical settings that
host such activities — the sidewalks and street corners, front apartments, parking lots, community gardens, and taco trucks — are
equally understudied, though they have become an increasingly visible
and relevant part of the city for a number of social groups. lawns, garage
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