Informal markets are a central feature of the twenty-first century’s first tumultuous years. Both part of and response to the homogenising forces of globalisation, they shape a volatile shadow system of heterogeneous micro-locations.

Informal Market Worlds maps this new kind of urban system emerging from the multi-directional movements of ongoing deregulations and realignments. Offering a global perspective on the conflicted realities of informal marketplaces - from survival activities of the urban poor to transnational clandestine trade networks - these analyses reveal how informality has become a political instrument in the struggles around global market integration. Bringing together imaginative architectural approaches with texts by key contemporary thinkers, the two-volume Informal Market Worlds (atlas + readder) explores new ways to interrupt the dominant logics of neoliberal governance.

Informal markets are a central feature of the twenty-first century’s first tumultuous years. Both part of and response to the homogenising forces of globalisation, they shape a volatile shadow system of heterogeneous micro-locations.

Informal Market Worlds maps this new kind of urban system emerging from the multi-directional movements of ongoing deregulations and realignments. Offering a global perspective on the conflicted realities of informal marketplaces - from survival activities of the urban poor to transnational clandestine trade networks - these analyses reveal how informality has become a political instrument in the struggles around global market integration. Bringing together imaginative architectural approaches with texts by key contemporary thinkers, the two-volume Informal Market Worlds (atlas + readder) explores new ways to interrupt the dominant logics of neoliberal governance.