Urban informality remains a central challenge for those engaged in understanding and transforming global South cities. There have been calls to develop new conceptual language geared to this challenge and much debate around the degree to which it might be subsumed within global urban theory. We argue that theories of informal urbanism need to be grounded in an understanding of how it works to sustain livelihoods, moving beyond studies of informal settlement, street vending and transport to understand the synergies, interrelations and interdependencies between them. Informal vending and transport provide employment and produce cheap goods and mobility; informal settlement produces affordable housing in key locations with access and mobility. ‘Inventraset’ is a portmanteau concept that links informal vending, transport and settlement into a dynamic urban assemblage that is inventive, transgressive and settled. This model is demonstrated through an empirical study of the spatial logic of the inventraset triangle within the megacities of Manila and Jakarta. Here the informal is normal, whether displayed in the intensities of transit nodes and street markets or camouflaged within zones of exclusion. This is not an ‘informal city’ but one where informal street vending, transport and settlement are geared to formal spatial and governance structures in different ways in different neighbourhoods − an assemblage of informal/formal and of vending/transport/settlement without which the urban economy would collapse. This is a call not simply to rename the informal but to understand it as a mode of production that is more than the inverse of the formal.

中文翻译：

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Inventraset 组合：非正式街头售货、交通和定居的空间逻辑

对于那些致力于理解和改造全球南方城市的人来说，城市非正规性仍然是一个核心挑战。有人呼吁开发新的概念语言来应对这一挑战，并围绕其在多大程度上纳入全球城市理论展开了许多争论。我们认为，非正规城市化理论需要建立在对其如何维持生计的理解之上，超越对非正规住区、街头售货和交通的研究，以理解它们之间的协同作用、相互关系和相互依赖性。非正规贩卖和运输提供就业机会并生产廉价商品和流动性；非正规住区在关键地点提供经济适用住房，并且具有便利性和流动性。“Inventraset”是一个混合概念，它将非正式的售货、交通和定居点连接成一个充满活力的城市组合，具有创造性、突破性和定居性。该模型通过对马尼拉和雅加达大城市内的 inventraset 三角形的空间逻辑进行实证研究来证明。在这里，非正式是正常的，无论是在交通枢纽和街头市场的强度中表现出来，还是在排斥区域内伪装起来。这不是一个“非正式城市”，而是一个非正式的街头贩卖、交通和居住以不同的方式适应不同社区的正式空间和治理结构的城市——非正式/正式和贩卖/交通/居住的组合，没有这些，城市经济将会崩溃。这不仅是对非正式的重新命名，而且是将其理解为一种生产方式，而不是与正式相反的生产方式。