Who Governs the 'Ungovernable'? Examining Governing Relations in Urban Informality

Abstract

For several decades now, Metro Manila’s Baclaran district has been home to thousands of street vendors who have capitalised on its functions as a commercial centre, a transport node, and a Filipino Catholic devotional site. This presence of informal hawkers, which some government officials consider as an urban blight, has generated a range of policies that seek to manage, if not eradicate, the informal hawkers. Years of street occupancy, however, have enabled the tenacious vendors to enforce grassroots mechanisms to appropriate streetscapes. I refer to this interplay of state interventions and grassroots practices as the formal-informal interface. Seen from an urban planning perspective, the..