The threads and threats of urban informality

By Pearl Wematu Puwurayire

On Tuesdays, at 6:30 a.m. in Abuakwa, a suburb of Kumasi in Ghana’s Ashanti Region, the day often begins with a familiar sound. Before many households have finished their morning prayers or stepped out of bed, the persistent honking of an “aboboyaa” (motor tricycle) echoes through the neighbourhood. For me, it was a signal as reliable as any clock. My father would call from the living room, reminding me to take out the household waste before the collector moved on to the next house. I would hurriedly throw a jacket over my nightwear, gather the waste, and make my way outside. The collector, balancing his work between urgency and routine, would already be waiting beside his tricycle, receiving solid waste from my neighbours and my household. His scale for measuring weight is his shoulders; if it weighs more than his shoulders can bear, he considers it very heavy, which would astronomically increase the price from the regular days. On such days, he would ask for assistance emptying it, and together we would lift it into the bucket of the motorised tricycle. For a few seconds, I would hold my breath against the smell before retreating indoors and continuing with my morning. At the time, there was nothing remarkable about this Tuesday morning ritual. It was simply part of everyday life. The waste collector arrived, the waste disappeared, and the neighbourhood remained clean. Yet years later, as an urban planner and researcher, I have come to realise that there is something profoundly remarkable about this ordinary encounter.

The waste collector was not employed by the municipal assembly. He did not wear an official uniform. The vehicle he operated was not part of a sophisticated municipal truck fleet. Depending on who was describing him, he might be called an informal worker, an informal service provider, or a participant in the informal economy. Yet every morning, he performed a service on which hundreds of households religiously depended. This raises an uncomfortable question. If a person provides an essential urban service, earns a living from it, follows a predictable route, maintains a loyal customer base, and becomes woven into the daily rhythms of a neighbourhood, what exactly makes that activity “informal” or “outside the system”?

The question extends far beyond waste collection. Across Ghana and many cities of Africa, urban life depends on activities and services routinely described as “informal”. Food vendors feed millions before dawn. Market traders sustain local and national economies. Informal transport operators move workers, students, and goods across cities every day. Water vendors, tanker operators, and community-managed boreholes supply households when centralised systems fail to reach them or cannot provide reliable services. Many of these activities have existed for decades. Some are older than the institutions that seek to regulate them. Some have survived political transitions, economic crises, technological changes, and waves of urban redevelopment. Yet they continue to be described through a language that suggests they are temporary, transitional, incomplete, or somehow outside the city’s formal order. But perhaps the problem lies not with the activities themselves. Perhaps it lies with the way we have chosen to understand them.

The idea of informality did not emerge because urban residents suddenly began behaving differently. Rather, it emerged because governments, economists, and development institutions needed a language to describe activities that did not fit their expectations of how cities should function. During the 1950s and 1960s, many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America experienced rapid urbanisation. People migrated from rural areas to cities in search of employment, education, and better opportunities. Yet formal employment opportunities did not expand at the same pace. As a result, millions of urban residents created their own jobs, built their own housing, organised their own transport systems, and developed alternative ways of accessing essential services. For many policy-makers and development experts at the time, these activities were viewed as signs of incomplete development. The assumption was simple: as economies modernised, these activities would eventually disappear. Informal work was understood as a temporary stage on the path to a fully modern, formal economy. This assumption proved remarkably resilient. More than 50 years later, informal workers continue to constitute the majority of the workforce in many African countries. Informal markets remain central to food distribution. Informal transport systems continue to move millions of passengers daily. Informal service providers continue to supply water, sanitation, housing, and other essential services where formal systems are absent, inadequate, or unreliable. The expected transition never fully arrived.

The persistence of these activities has forced a rethinking of urban informality. Instead of asking why informality continues to exist, many scholars now ask why certain activities are labelled informal in the first place. The answer often lies less in the activities themselves than in the institutions that define, regulate, and recognise them. Consider two people selling food. One operates from a licensed restaurant. The other sells food from a roadside stall. Both prepare meals. Both serve customers. Both generate income. Both contribute to the local economy. Yet one is recognised as part of the formal economy while the other is often classified as informal. The distinction is not necessarily about the nature of the work. It is about systems of recognition, regulation, taxation, and planning. In terms of recognition, the licensed restaurant is formally registered through state institutions and appears in official records. The roadside vendor, by contrast, is often recognised through everyday practice. Her legitimacy is built over years of serving the same neighbourhood, feeding the same customers, and becoming part of the community’s social and economic fabric. One form of recognition is bureaucratic; the other is social. In terms of regulation, both actors are subject to oversight. Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies may inspect food preparation practices, sanitation conditions, and public health standards in both settings. The difference often lies in how regulation is exercised. The licensed restaurant is usually engaged through scheduled inspections, formal notices, consultations, and established legal procedures. The roadside vendor frequently encounters a more uncertain form of engagement. Interactions may occur without notice, enforcement may be discretionary, and evictions or relocations can happen with limited consultation or opportunity for appeal. Taxation reveals a similar pattern. The licensed restaurant contributes through recognised tax systems linked to business registration, profits, and income declarations. The roadside vendor may not appear in formal tax records, yet often contributes through daily tolls, market fees, operating permits, or local levies collected by municipal authorities. Both contribute financially to local governance, but only one contribution is routinely acknowledged as part of the formal economy. Planning processes further illustrate this unequal recognition. Restaurants are incorporated into zoning regulations, business districts, and urban development plans. Roadside vendors often operate in spaces deemed temporary, undesirable, or incompatible with official planning visions, even though they have occupied those locations for decades and provide essential services to surrounding communities. Seen in this light, urban informality is not simply the absence of regulation, taxation, or governance. Rather, it reflects unequal forms of institutional recognition. The distinction between formal and informal, therefore, tells us less about whether activities are organised and more about how states, planners, and regulatory institutions choose to classify, engage, and value different forms of urban life.

Hence, urban scholars have increasingly argued that informality should not be understood as the opposite of formality. In reality, the two are deeply intertwined. Street vendors may purchase goods from formal wholesalers. Informal transport operators may rely on formally constructed roads or purchase fuel and car parts from formalised institutions. Residents of informal settlements may pay utility bills, property levies, or service fees. Government agencies may selectively tolerate activities that technically fall outside official regulations while simultaneously relying on them to fill service gaps. The boundary between formal and informal, therefore, begins to look less like a wall and more like a moving line. It shifts across places, sectors, and political contexts. What is tolerated today may be prohibited tomorrow. What is considered informal in one city may be fully recognised in another; for instance, while motor tricycles are largely tolerated in the Central Business District of Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, they are not tolerated in the Central Business District of Sunyani, the Bono Region of Ghana. This raises a deeper challenge for planners and policy-makers. If the formal and informal are constantly intertwined, then attempts to divide urban life into two separate worlds may, in theory, obscure urban realities more than they realistically reveal. The city that appears orderly and regulated often depends on practices that operate beyond official plans. Likewise, spaces labelled as informal frequently contain their own rules, institutions, systems of accountability, and forms of organisation. The result is a paradox. Many of the activities that sustain urban life are simultaneously essential and marginalised. They are visible in everyday practice yet invisible in many planning documents. They generate livelihoods and provide services, yet are often discussed primarily as problems to be solved. Understanding this paradox requires moving beyond the question of what informality is to a more important one: how do cities continually produce conditions that make people rely on informal arrangements in the first place?

For many urban residents, informality is not a choice made from a menu of alternatives. It is often the outcome of necessity. When reliable jobs are scarce, people create their own employment. When housing is unaffordable, people construct homes incrementally. When piped water does not reach a neighbourhood, residents dig wells, purchase water from vendors, or organise community boreholes. When public transport is inadequate, alternative transport systems emerge. These responses can be described as the city’s involuntary muscles in action. Informality cannot be understood solely as a category of economic activity. It is also a means of survival.

The burdens of informalisation often fall disproportionately on those with the fewest resources. Low-income households are more likely to depend on informal water sources, informal transport, informal housing, and informal employment. Women frequently absorb additional forms of labour associated with these arrangements. Across many households, women spend time sourcing water, managing storage, caring for family members during service disruptions, and navigating the everyday challenges created by unreliable infrastructure. Meanwhile, more affluent groups often possess a greater capacity to move between formal and informal arrangements. They can install backup systems, purchase alternative services, hire labour, or use private infrastructure when public systems fail. Informality, therefore, does not affect everyone in the same way. This uneven exposure reveals something important. Informality is not simply a reflection of inequality. It can also become a mechanism for reproducing inequality.

The challenge is that discussions about informality frequently focus on visible symptoms rather than underlying causes. Street vendors, informal settlements, water vendors, and waste collectors become the objects of regulation and intervention. Less attention is given to the planning decisions, institutional practices, service gaps, and economic conditions that make these arrangements necessary in the first place. As a result, urban debates often treat informality as the problem rather than asking what conditions have produced it. A city where residents must rely on alternative water suppliers during frequent shortages tells us something about water governance. A city where informal transport carries the majority of commuters tells us something about mobility systems. A city where informal workers dominate employment tells us something about labour markets and economic structures. Informality, in other words, is not merely evidence of what residents are doing. It is also evidence of what institutions are failing to do, what they choose not to do, and what they are unable to do. Seen from this perspective, informality becomes more than a survival strategy. It becomes a window through which we can understand how opportunities, resources, risks, and recognition are unevenly distributed across the city.

This does not mean romanticising informality. Informal arrangements can be exploitative, unsafe, and deeply unequal. Residents should not have to depend on unreliable services, insecure livelihoods, or precarious housing simply because formal systems are absent or inadequate. At the same time, it is equally problematic to dismiss informal practices as irrational, disorganised, or temporary. Doing so overlooks the knowledge, labour, and creativity that urban residents invest in making cities work every day. The challenge for planners is therefore not simply to replace informal systems with formal ones. It is to understand how different arrangements interact and how their benefits and burdens are distributed. This requires a shift in perspective. Instead of asking how to eliminate informality, we might ask how urban institutions can support the people who already provide essential services. Instead of treating informal practices as evidence of failure, we might examine what they reveal about unmet needs, governance gaps, and opportunities for more inclusive forms of urban development. Most importantly, we need to recognise that cities are not built solely through plans, regulations, and infrastructure projects. They are also built through countless acts of adaptation, cooperation, maintenance, repair, and improvisation carried out by ordinary people. The city that appears on a planning map is only one version of the city. The city that people actually live in is far more complex.

On most mornings, the waste collector who passed through my neighbourhood probably did not think of himself as a participant in urban governance. He was simply doing his job. He arrived on time. He provided a service. He earned a living. He helped keep the neighbourhood clean. Yet his daily routine raises a question that extends far beyond one individual, one neighbourhood, or even one city. Why do we continue to describe so many essential urban activities as informal? The question is worth asking because the label carries consequences. It shapes how activities are perceived, regulated, supported, and valued. It influences who receives recognition and who remains invisible. It shapes who counts as knowledgeable, who matters as labour, and whose contributions are considered part of the city. For decades, urban debates have often treated informality as a problem to be solved. Entire policy agendas have been organised around bringing informal activities into the formal sphere, regulating them, relocating them, or replacing them altogether. While some forms of regulation and protection are necessary, the underlying assumption is rarely questioned: that formality represents the ideal and informality represents a deviation from it. Yet the everyday realities of cities tell a different story. The food vendor, the market trader, the mechanic, the waste collector, the water vendor, the transport operator, and countless others are not operating at the margins of urban life. They are deeply embedded within it. They help sustain systems of mobility, food provision, waste management, housing, and service delivery that millions depend upon every day. This does not mean that all informal arrangements should be celebrated. Many emerge from conditions of exclusion, inadequate public investment, and unequal access to opportunities. People should not have to rely on precarious livelihoods or insecure services to meet basic needs. But neither should we ignore the reality that these arrangements have become woven into the social, economic, and material fabric of cities. Perhaps the most important lesson is that urban informality is neither a temporary phase nor a residual leftover waiting to disappear with development. It is part of how cities function. It reflects the ingenuity of residents, the limitations of institutions, the uneven distribution of resources, and the constant negotiation through which urban life is organised. The threads of urban informality connect livelihoods, services, relationships, and opportunities. They help cities adapt, survive, and grow. The threats of urban informality remind us that these same arrangements can expose people to insecurity, exploitation, and exclusion. Recognising both realities is essential. If planners, politicians, and urban practitioners are serious about building more inclusive cities, the task is not simply to ask how informality can be eliminated. The more pressing question is how cities can recognise, support, and improve the systems that already sustain everyday life while addressing the inequalities that make so many people dependent on precarious arrangements. The next time we pass a waste collector, purchase food from a roadside vendor, board a minibus, or buy water from a neighbourhood supplier, we might pause for a moment and reconsider what we mean when we call these activities informal.

The answer may tell us less about the people performing them and far more about the ways we have chosen to understand the city itself.

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