Economic Spaces and Mobility Nodes: Exploring the Relationship of Urban Informal Trading to Transport and Land Use

Abstract

Urban mobility has been a challenge for planners and policy-makers particularly when informal livelihoods of poor populations take place in transport nodes. Policies and planning interventions, however, often focus on spaces and flows of formal economic activities and transport system. In this paper, we examine how street hawking contributes to the complexity of land use patterns in one Southeast Asian metropolitan district where informal trading occurs in public transport nodes. The results illustrate a set of overlapping socio-spatial issues arising from how various players use public spaces for transport and trading practices. We explain how these issues constitute policy dilemmas that de..