Xu Miao, Chen Yulin, Martha Chen

Keywords： Informal Economy and Employment; Urban Spatial Development; Global Trend; Local Response; Urban Planning and Governance

Abstract：

As a preface to this special issue, this paper has two parts. The first part summarizes the scale and importance of the sustained and rapid growth of the informal economy and employment in the urban economic system in worldwide; analyzes the differences between countries and regions and their reflection on urban space, especially in China; and then discusses the limitations and problems of traditional urban planning in dealing with the development of urban informal economy from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The second part introduces the six articles included in this issue. Three of them are from foreign scholars and about the latest international research findings on urban informality. They explore in depth the development and governance of informal cities in developed countries represented by the United States, the informal housing improvement in developing countries and the mistakes and limitations of urban planning in dealing with the informal economy and space. The other three papers are from Chinese scholars and discuss respectively the job- living spatial mismatch for informal workers, the informal housing and community building and the informal use and governance of urban public space, presenting the problems and challenges in the domain of urban spatial planning in face of the pervasive informal economy

Funds：

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