Rebel Streets and the Informal Economy

Alison Brown is Professor of Urban Planning and International Development in the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, UK. She is an urban planner, whose research focuses on urbanization and development policy, local governance and urban law, livelihoods, the urban informal economy and post-conflict cities, and she has published widely on the informal economy and rights-based approaches to development. She was Principal Investigator on the research project Making Space for the Poor: Law, Rights, Regulation and Street-Trade in the 21st Century, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)/Department for International Development (DFID) Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research, reported in this book. She was an expert adviser to Habitat III, the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (as a member of Policy Unit 1 on the Right to the City and Cities for All) and has written specialist development Topic Guides for DFID on planning for sustainable cities in the global south and livelihoods and urbanisation. She is a board member of the NGO Reall (formerly Homeless International) and planning adviser to the global network WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing).

1. Urban informality and 'rebel streets' Part 1: 'Rebel Streets' - Law, Rights and Space in Urban Development 2. Legal Paradigms and the informal economy: pluralism, empowerment, rights or governance? 3. Rights-based approaches and social injustice: a critique 4. 'Right to the city' and the new urban order 5. Reclaiming space: street trading and revanchism in Latin America 6. Claiming the streets: reframing property rights for the urban informal economy 7. Law and the informal economy - the WIEGO law project Part 2: Street Trading at the Front Line 8. Claiming urban space through judicial activism − street vendors of Ahmedabad 9. Law and litigation in street trader livelihoods − Durban, South Africa 10. Revisiting the revanchist city: the changing politics of street vending in Guangzhou 11. Commerce of the street in Sénégal − between illegality and tolerance 12. The politics and regulation of street trading in Dar es Salaam 13. Street trade in post-Arab spring Tunisia − transition and the law 14. Street traders in post-revolution Cairo − victims or villains Part 3: Claiming 'Rebel Streets' 15. Emerging themes for the new legal order