Informal Market Worlds Atlas - the Architecture of Economic Pressure

Informal markets are a central feature of the 21st century’s first tumultuous years. Both part of and response to the homogenizing forces of globalization, they constitute a volatile shadow system of heterogeneous micro-locations. Informal Market Worlds maps this new kind of urban system emerging from ongoing deregulations and realignments. Bringing together imaginative architectural approaches with texts by key contemporary thinkers, the two-part Informal Market Worlds explores new ways to interrupt the dominant logics of neoliberal governance. With groundbreaking research, the hefty Atlas includes 73 case studies, in locations ranging from Kabul’s post-conflict Bush Bazaar to Arizona’s Snow Birds hipster markets. 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.