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URBAN
ECONOMY | Informal Economy
The documents
here collated discuss the theme of informal economy including
measures to provide recognition of rights, regularisation
of land and informal housing developments and street trading.
In this section are also discussed matters related to conflict
and confrontation over space use.
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local level
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Grundström, Karin & Laura Like (2001) - Coping
in Costa Rica - May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
Costa Rica - FUPROVI (Fundación
Promotora de Vivienda) a Costa Rican NGO, has been developing
a self-help housing construction scheme that has been implemented
in numerous urban settlements during the last 15 years.
Their work is based on helping people help themselves by
providing them the means of getting access to the formal
sector of society -governmental housing subsidies and services
of commercial banks.
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Kagawa, Ayako (2001) - Policy Effects and Tenure Security
Perceptions of Peruvian Urban Land Tenure Regularisation
Policy in the 1990s - May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop
[pdf]
Peru - A questionnaire based household
survey and interviews were carried out in informal settlements
in Metropolitan Lima in 1999 and 2000. Based on the different
consolidation aspects of legal, social, physical and economic
developed in the conceptual framework, variables were collected
and indicators were generated. The main finding through
this household survey was that whilst there is a strong
link between legal and physical consolidation, there is
a weak link between legal and economic, especially that
of access to credit. The survey highlights the need to create
a follow-up mechanism that can accentuate the consolidation
process after legal consolidation.
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Riley, Elizabeth (2001) - A Portrait of 'Illegality
and Informality': the favela of Pavão-Pavãozinho
and the perceptions of its residents - May 2001 ESF
/ N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
Brazil-This paper explores the manifestations
and meanings of illegality and informality within one squatter
settlement or favela in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
That favela is Pavão-Pavãozinho, a settlement
of around 10 thousand people occupying a steep hillside
in the wealthy neighbourhood of Copacabana. |
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city level
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Bentinck, Johan & Shilpa Chikara (2001) - Illegal
factories in Delhi: the controversy, the causes, and the
expected future - May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
India - There over 100,000 mostly small
unauthorised units located in residential areas: many of
them highly polluting chemical, metal, asbestos, rubber,
and plastic factories. Originally, these factories were
established in and around urbanising villages, where the
land-use regulations are less strict. Since, many of these
industrialised villages have been incorporated into the
city, and many slums inhabited by factory labour have mushroomed
around it.
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Fernandes, Edesio (2001) - Regularising informal settlements
in Brazil: legalisation, security of tenure and city management
- May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
Brazil - The paper discusses the advantages
of innovative land tenure policies for the promotion of
security of land tenure in urban areas in Brazil vis-a-vis
traditional legalisation policies in which full freehold
titles are recognised. For the assessment of the efficacy
of the tenure policies adopted in the four case studies,
the following aspects have been considered: promotion of
sociospatial integration; impact on the land market; access
to (formal and informal) credit; perception of security
of tenure; gender implications; and impact on poverty eradication
policies.
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Mathema, Ashna S. (2001) - Housing and land markets
in Kathmandu, Nepal - May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop
[pdf]
Nepal - Increase in demand for urban housing
in the latter half of this century had led to the emergence
of housing as a priority sector for many national governments
and public authorities around the globe. While not all informal
settlements provide unsatisfactory living conditions, they
are usually inadequately served with essential infrastructure.
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Melé, Patrice (2001) - Protection de l'environnement,
illégalité et division sociale de l'espace
urbain à Monterrey - May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS
Workshop [pdf]
Mexico - Les références
à la protection de la nature sont le plus souvent
mobilisées pour stigmatiser des formes d'urbanisation
populaires. Cependant, une recherche sur la ville de Monterrey
permet d'illustrer une modalité différente
des relations entre qualifications environnementales et
division sociale des espaces de la croissance urbaine. Ce
texte se proposent d'étudier les formes de production
de l'illégalité liées à des
qualifications juridiques environnementales et leurs impacts
sur la division sociale de l'espace urbain.
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Ochieng, Crispino C. (2001) - Illegal Development in
the Face of Planned Komarok Housing Program in Nairobi
- May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
Kenya - In the research factors that
could lead to development within an originally planned neighborhood
of both illegal and informal built environment are identified
and their causes discussed. This paper shall argue that
most of the housing developments that are currently being
witnessed within the planned face of Komarok housing estate
are informal and thus illegal. The paper shall seek to argue
that in spite of their character, they are an important
part of urbanism and that should be recognized.
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international level
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Apuzzo, Gian Matteo (2001) - Urban communities and participation
in the XXI century: the informal urban century - May
2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop[pdf]
The paper tries to analyse urban community future and popular
participation in informal urban realities. Community-based
processes can be an fundamental element to copy with informality
and illegality. Two aspects must be solved: what does participation
mean in urban reality of the cities of the South? How can
participation be structured in a reality based on self-help?
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Berner, Erhard (2000) - Learning from informal markets:
Innovative approaches to land and housing provision
- May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
Substandard and insecure housing conditions are recognised
as a crucial aspect of urban poverty. In most large cities
in the developing world, the formal market serves only a
minority of the population. Based on Pal Baross's argument,
the paper states that the conventional sequence of Planning-Servicing-Building-Occupation
is a key factor in both market and state failures. The paper
introduces the Philippines' 'Community Mortgage Program'
and Hydarabad's incremental development scheme 'Khuda ki
Basti' as best practices in this direction.
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Durand-Lasserve, Alain & Jean-François Tribillon
(2001) - Coping with Illegality in Human Settlements
in Developing Cities - May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop
[pdf]
In this paper emphasis is deliberately placed on the issues
of illegality in human settlements. These issues seem to
us more important than the question of informality. This
latter question has already given rise to an large quantity
of literature over the last two decades. For at least three
decades - that is to say since the expansion of "irregular"
settlements has been perceived as a lasting structural phenomenon
- the debate on housing policy insistently refers to the
question of the illegality of human settlements, without
reaching any satisfying solution. For a long time it appeared
that, in order to get rid of this problem, it would have
been sufficient to combine measures of repression of illegal
occupations, prevention measures legal tenure regularisation
and large-scale programmes of land delivery to the poor.
The results have been limited and disappointing.
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Gossé, Marc (2001) - Informalité, illégalité
modèles
de gouvernance? - May 2001 ESF / N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
Nous voudrions réaffirmer qu'il n'y a rien d'informel
(sans forme) dans l' "informel" et rien d'illégitime
dans l' "illégal "et qu'il s'agit au contraire
de reconnaître et de contribuer à consolider
les moyens de développement durable des populations
urbaines défavorisées, en même temps
que de combattre les pratiques formalisées, légalisées
de la spéculation, de la corruption et du détournement
sous toutes ses formes, qui sont le fait d'acteurs politiquement
illégitimes.
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websites |
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Habitat
Agenda
Section IV C - Chapter
9: Improving urban economies
Par. 160 (c) Encourage
fair treatment of the informal sector, promote the use of
environmentally sound practices and encourage links between
financial institutions and non-governmental organizations
that support the informal sector, where it exists.
[Whole Chapter
[pdf]
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Documents highlighting DFID's published
work in the field of informal economy and its impact
on people living in urban areas: |
"Managing
Informal Street Traders in Mexico city" - Wakely,
Patrick; Nicholas You (2001) – Implementing
the Habitat Agenda: In Search of Urban Sustainability
- DPU [pdf]
Mexico - Reorganising Mexico City's
100,000 street traders was among the priorities of
the first democratically elected city government (1998-2000).
A new programme developed under this government focused
on managing street traders through administrative
changes at local level, citizen participation, constructing
good relations between public officials and street
traders, and resolving congestion in some specific
zones.
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"Cuba-Urban
Agriculture" Allen, Adriana; Nicholas You (2002)
– Sustainable Urbanisation: Bridging the
Green and Brown Agendas – DPU [pdf]
Cuba - In the early 1990s Cuba faced
an economic crisis, with emergency food shortages
in cities, rising food prices and a growing black
market. Fruit and vegetables, even when produced in
plenty in the country, often rotted in fields and
warehouses because transport and distribution systems
were also in crisis. Today food is more available,
prices have fallen and quality has improved. To an
great extent this results from a government policy
of supporting urban and peri-urban agriculture at
a community level.
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"The Informal Economy Policy Framework in
Durban" - Ibid. [pdf]
South Africa - Durban has set out
on a process of policy making to support its informal
economy. This has entailed elaborating a vision for
the role of the informal economy in long-term economic
plans, turning that vision into policy, and setting
up an implementation strategy with institutional structures.
A crucial element for this policy process has been
strengthening organisations of informal traders so
that the government has strong partners with whom
to negotiate. |
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