**7. The need for adjustment in global south urban planning standards to meet current realities**

The dogmatic stance of many urban planners in global South cities has aggravated the challenges of many urban areas. Instead of working towards solving the problems, they are concerned with ensuring 'ordered' cities at the expense of livelihood, economic growth and accomplishment of many other sustainable development goals. However, Watson [6] has described the reason for the ineffectiveness of global South planners as a complex issue which in some cases lies beyond the powers and will of the planners and linked to some local political ideologies and beyond, to the international policies. One of the tools of traditional urban planning is the master plan, a very powerful tool that has been used by planners to affect the urban rich and the poor in different ways. For the rich, it's a tool that helps them to maintain their properties at strategic locations of the city while the urban poor have been marginalized using the master plan. The master plan of earlier years concentrated on physical development without much consideration of other aspects of life like economic and

*Sustainability in Urban Planning and Design*

the informal economy [33].

**5.3 The role informal economy in global South**

could become lost in the bureaucracy of formality.

**6. Urban planning and informal economy in global South**

shown that the informal economy has shown to be the single practical option in the face a drop in rise of formal employment and has effectively functioned as a shock absorber, remained consistent across period and got enlarged in operations. Gali and Kucera [34] in agreement assert that the informal economy has repeatedly acted as a shock absorber for official employment, whereas, the informal sector accounts for 93% of jobs created in the African continent in the 1990s [35]. Comparably, whereas, the portion of formal economy recorded a reduction in the

More statistics on the prevalence of informal economy in the global South was presented by ILO [36] and; Williams and Nadin [37]. When the incidence of informal sector vis-a-vis the formal sector is disaggregated across the various regions of the world in terms the percentage of the self-employed, we have the following data: 70% in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); 62% in North America; 60% in Latin America and 59% in Asia. Horn (cited in [38]) notes that: 72% of non-agricultural employment in sub-Saharan Africa is informal; 84% of women non-agricultural workers are informally employed in sub-Saharan Africa and the greater part of recent employment in Africa are in the informal economy. Across the continent of Africa, reports that the informal sector provides between 50 and 75% of jobs, and 72% of non-agricultural employment. The portion of non-agricultural employment rises to 78% with the exclusion of South Africa. The informal economy has the following portions out of some countries' labour force in Africa: more than 50% in Kenya and Uganda; about 43% in South Africa and Zambia; and 89% in Ghana [35]. Nigeria's informal economy is believed to have contributed greater than 50% to both the entire country's labour force as well as its GDP, estimated to have gone up from about 50% in the 1970s to about 65% in the 1980s [39–41]. Estimate of Nigeria's average portion of informal economy relative to the nation's GDP was put at 56% within 1999 to 2005 [42]. A third of Nigeria's urban labour is believed to come from

Informal economy plays a vital role in transition and developing countries in facilitating successful adjustment to globalization and structural reforms. It provides a means of survival to a large number of poor and extremely poor workers in a society and also plays a vital role in unlocking entrepreneurial potentials which

Urban planning in the global South is established as founded and inherited from the global North [6, 43, 44]. The global South surely appreciates this offer, however, instead of moving ahead to re-examine what has been received and practiced for decades based on current urban realities, many global South cities' planners have stuck to the traditional planning system, which Watson ([6], p. 2262) has aptly captured as *dinosaur* in contemporary era. The dogmatic attitude of global South planners in the midst of glaring current urban realities is very much exemplified in planners' reaction to the informal economy which is obviously the ONLY available alternative for many urban residents based on the dwindling formal economy. One of the descriptions of informality in Duminy ([45], p. 1) as *a range of behaviours and practices* **unfolding** *within cities* has been very much overtaken as many researchers have realized that informality and precisely informal economic

total workforce, the informal economy recorded an increase [33].

**42**

social. The continuous use of the traditional planning systems by global South planners especially in African cities to manage contemporary cities has been described as an *impossible task* ([51], p. 4 in [43]). This is due to Colonial-based urban planning systems adopted by these planners instead of contextual-based planning systems that take cognizance of the current urban realities in the global South. Another reason for the adjustment of the global South planning standards is that, the challenges of informal economic activities, were believed to be a problem characteristic of informal/unplanned settlements in global South cities and so did not constitute much challenge to urban planners' areas of jurisdiction, however, recent researches have shown that since the Structural Adjustment Programme of the 1990s, the 2008 global economic recession and more recently, the international neoliberal policies, the proliferation of informal economic activities has extended to the formal/planned layouts of high and medium density and surprisingly to the low density areas [52], the very domain of the rich in our cities. This is thought provoking and calls for urgent action by planners rather than the dogmatic refusal to acknowledge informal economy. Another reason for planners to reconsider their planning standards is that many governments of the global South cities have found solace for unemployment challenge by setting up skill-acquisition centres, entrepreneurship centre and smallscale training and empowerment centre, no matter the nomenclature adopted, the bottom line is that the possible form of empowerment and employment that most global South governments can offer to the teeming unemployed youths and adults is in the informal economy. Yet urban planners have no plan for accommodating these growing entrepreneurs in most global South cities. This scenario will very soon make the planning profession in the global South obsolete, inefficient and irrelevant to the contemporary city-residents. It is therefore a wakeup call for urban planners in the global South to rise up to the current challenge to ensure a continued relevance. It is expected that planners should step up from the traditional planning systems that laid the foundation of global south planning and step into current urban realities of the global South by producing innovative and inclusive urban plans.
