Sally Roever shows how an inclusive attitude towards street vendors and an understanding of how they fit into the urban economy and streetscape has improved livelihoods dramatically in Bhubaneswar and Durban, in the next instalment of our series on urban livelihoods with WIEGO.
Caroline Skinner demonstrates the significance of the world's informal workforce and lays out six priorities for integrating informal workers within urban planning processes.
Witness' documentary People Before Profit portrays forced evictions around the world, expressing the trauma that citizens feel when their homes and possessions are violently taken from them.
Forced evictions are usually illegal, yet they are increasingly routine for many governments, assisted by international institutions. Rather than helping governments justify evictions, institutions need to steer governments towards true 'voluntarism'.
The rise of a "militant non-aligned social movement", Abahlali Basemjondolo, in KwaZulu-Natal has challenged the idea that the ANC represent the poor. Its well-organised protests have attracted violent police retaliation, unlike the marches organised by ANC-aligned trade unions.
Residents of low-income urban areas are critically dependent on street vendors as their only source of low-cost goods in small quantities--particularly fruits and vegetables, other fresh food and basic household goods.
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
