Through stakeholder engagement, but mainly depends on the nature of the sector, too.

Dear Ali,

Thank you so much for your response! Greetings from Ibadan, Nigeria.

I don't think it is worthwhile to integrate all informal sectors into formal planning. Maybe it's better to leave some in the informal way.

Dear Feng,

Can you briefly state the reason for your response?

Thanks in anticipation

Dear Kolade,

I think it may exist a process or develop an understanding of the informal community logics to abord them. Please review the works of Pedro Abramo here in RG. He discovered the internal logic of the Favela in Rio de Janeiro as a model of economic, urban, and social production. And how these networks are functioning and inside them there is a lot of learnings and questions of the challenges for traditional or formal planning. Deepening in this and understanding it, it will be possible to integrate government and formality of planning. It is also essential to work with the community as stakeholders and to understand their culture.

This question is problematic in so many levels. If you ask "how best..." something is, I want to know for who?

I believe that knowing and urgency are two fundamental principles, among many that must guide spatial planning.

Informal sectors can be integrated through participatory process but not all informal sectors need transformation, some need to stay informal in order to sustain the formal sectors

Dear @mutshidzi Funzani.

Thank you for your contribution.

Dear @mutshidzi Funzani.

Thank you for your contribution.

Integrating the informal sector into formal planning is the worst thing to do in promoting the livelihoods people derive from it. The informal sector generates its own mechanisms of operation that do not require formal planning for it to grow and sustain its existence. Formal planning is a killer to informal sector. It rather should adapt. One should think of planning the informal sector through a good knowlegde and understanding of its logics.

Dear @gabriel tati,

Thank you for this invaluable contribution.

The meaning of the question and therefore the answer will depend very much on the institutions, land tenure arrangements and power relationships that apply in the city or province or country being studied.

The person or people who hold ownership rights over the land is a critical question. In a western country like Australia, formal planning including statutory planning is a set of rules or policies or restrictions superimposed upon what the tenure holder would otherwise be at liberty to do. There is always potential tension between the landholder's private rights and the restrictions that the formal planning authority wishes to impose in the public interest.

In a country where customary ownership prevails, the formal planning system will sometimes have difficulty identifying who can speak on behalf of the owners, especially where land is held by oral tradition and not documents. Most formal planning systems will allow some form of public consultation so that any citizen or resident can express their views about the proposed planning scheme, but the landholders will have a higher level of rights, in other words a stronger level of "interest" in the scheme. For example, commonly landholders will be given legal rights to be notified about changes to the formal planning scheme applying to neighbouring allotments.

In a country like Australia where governments change hands from time to time between more business-friendly and more community-friendly parties (loosely speaking, between right- and left-orientated parties), the restrictions that the government allows formal planning to impose see-saw, with business-friendly governments loosening restrictions and left-orientated parties introducing stronger planning and environmental regulation. This uncertainty weakens formal planning and makes it easier for landowners to ratchet their development rights upwards.

I'm wandering away from your question, but I'm trying to make the point that the person or body who has the legal right to occupy land is in a strong position to frustrate formal planning or to cooperate with formal planning. It is the landholder who decides whether to develop or not within the limitations of formal planning.

In other words, land tenure conveys the right to use and develop land, and formal planning tends to retrieve or limit some of those rights.

In many developing countries, land tenure is contested and the informal sector may not have legal rights to occupy the land. In other words, they may be squatters. This makes it difficult to mark out a clear role for them within the formal planning system. Assuming that the land tenure system and the formal planning system are separate administrative systems, formal planning is usually not capable of disentangling questions of tenure and ownership.

I have attached an extract from a departmental guideline explaining property rights and responsibilities in Queensland Australia. The legal framework described here is fairly similar across those countries that have a British colonial heritage but may not apply in other countries. The British colonists assumed ownership then parcelled land out (alienated it from the Crown). This is very different from countries where customary ownership prevails.

In summary, to involve the informal sector in formal planning it is usually necessary to encourage the informal sector to organise itself into recognised representative bodies and to elect spokespeople who are literate and educated so that they can participate fully in the formal planning process.

Dear Kolade,

Going by the clear definition of informal sector, it might be an onerous task to integrate it into formal sector. But we can reduce the "informality" by turning it into "semi formal sector". That is, we can open a social register for informal sector to enhance their participation in urban operations and processes, create standards that can accommodate them. But their functionality and structure might still remain an issue to deal with.

The best way is to ask the inhabitants of the informal settlements and those earning livelihoods from the informal sector

Through collective and participatory attempts.