Browsing by Subject "Informality"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Present and Active: Unpacking The Negotiated Logics of Container Street Traders in the Governance of a Ghanaian city
    (2022) Amoah, Samuel Twumasi; Oldfield, Sophie
    This research addresses a gap in contemporary scholarship on street trading and its governance in Ghanaian cities which predominantly focuses on the exclusionary policies that limit and, in some instances, aim to eliminate street trading. Container street traders play critical roles in the everyday governance of city streetscapes in Wa, a city in the Upper West Region of Ghana. In negotiating access to space by either renting, perching, buying, or constructing container stalls and setting up their trade, they shape the street and its built environment. Providing access to goods and services, container traders contribute to the street economy. Traders encounter and engage with a range of city actors in their everyday trading lives. They negotiate access to space, comply with regulations that govern the building of trading space and trade itself. In this thesis I examine the roles traders play in city governance, the logics which shapes the ways traders are legitimate actors, present and active in the city's streetscape. By examining street traders' negotiated logics (NL), the vital and diverse roles they play in city governance, I reposition the dominant conceptualisations of street traders, by portraying the varied ways container traders shape the city's streetscape and the regulations governing their trade. I draw on in-depth interviews and participant observations with traders and various city actors including land and container owners, city officials, and their representatives, I analyze the varied micro-practices that sustain trade, shape traders varied negotiated logics, and their roles in the city governance. Some traders enter street trading to make do, to survive. Others do so to move up, build a business, and become entrepreneurs. Some traders in their quests to reorganise their lives use street trading as a way of building an anchor and refuge in the city. These varied negotiated logics shape the ways in which traders engage with city officials and regulations, specifically how they navigate paying tolls, fees, and rents. Some traders participate and comply with regulations to maintain the rights to trade and not to worry. Some traders work to renegotiate to postpone and delay compliance, while some dodge regulations by being strategically absent. In making this argument, I contribute to calls in current scholarship to acknowledge the heterogeneity of street trade and its varied roles in city governance. Rather than victims, street traders are critical actors whose varied and negotiated trading logics shape city governance, its built environment, and the street economy.
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    Your Mess, My Life: The Junction between Land Use Planning and Street Vending in the Accra Mall Enclave
    (2022) Quarcoo, Joseph Dennis Nii Noi; Haysom, Gareth
    City managers and planners in the global South, particularly in African cities are confronted with an unprecedented urbanisation fraught with complexities such as urban sprawl, jobless growth, and informality. Urban planning practice in Ghana has retained colonial legacies that outlaw informality, be it economic, such as, street trading or housing, such as, slums. This has led to the marginalisation of the urban poor, who make up the majority of urban dwellers. Consequently, the masses invent ways to survive in the city and thus reshape the materiality of urban spaces. Most planners and state officials consider the activities of street vendors as a nuisance that mar the beauty of our cities. For this reason, 24% of the Ghanaian labour force who work on the streets are targets of misaligned and officious controls that include but are not limited to evictions. However, when evicted, most generally return to the streets. Building on existing work on urban planning in the global South and feeding into Southern urban theory, the research focuses explicitly on the Accra Mall Enclave (AME) as a microcosm of African cities. It explores how various players – planners/vendors/politicians – interact and navigate the dynamics of daily experiences. The research asks, how are planners navigating the tensions between planning regulations and the reality of street trading around the Accra Mall Enclave (AME)? What are street traders' logics, strategies, and experiences? How are vendors negotiating their interactions with state actors such as police, planners, city guards, toll collectors, etc.? The questions were answered through qualitative research methods; field observations, interviews, and a review of planning regulations and policies. The results of the study contribute to our understanding of how cities are being built in Africa, particularly Accra, Ghana. As a case study, the focus on the AME assisted in exposing the role of planners in this mode of urbanisation, while also uncovering meaning associated with space and place. Findings show that the state is reluctantly, if not unwillingly, coming to terms with vending within the AME. This could however change quickly if politics change, so still precarious. There are no viable alternatives to relocation, and vendors have established significant relationships and tactics that somehow entrench their position howbeit insecure. Besides all these, state officials, when acting in their individual capacity side with the vending profession because the state has not created jobs. Despite this personal understanding, the system, specifically state bureaucracy, generates obstacles, and as a result existing state structures frustrate the planning practice. This is complicated further by politics. Hence, planners themselves feel helpless, marginalised, and trapped. Further, spatial plans do not adequately provide access to the land needed by informal sector actors. The state resorts to occasional evictions when there is an adequate budget for this action. Imaginations of world class cityness dominate perceptions of the space. This is a candid depiction of the do-nothing scenario – the active contribution of the state in the creation of informality within the AME and the city of Accra, Ghana.