Deviation, Transgression or Digression? The Informal City as the Dominant Phenomenon in the Zimbabwean Urban Economy

This chapter is an attempt to dissect the Zimbabwean urban economy in terms of its normative versus positive developments emerging especially after 1990. There is a general construct that the country had high regard to urban planning and development standards before and immediately after independence. The change in the political economy of the country, particularly after the adoption of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme in 1991 and other economic reforms afterwards, ushered in and brought about an imprint of economic informalisation in the urban areas. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a nuanced narrative and discussion of the informal city as a dominant phenomenon of the Zimbabwean urban economy. The work adopted a case study research design and a qualitative methodological approach where a thorough distillation of literature sources relevant to informal city discourses was conducted, and case studies on Zimbabwean cities with respect to all the economic sectors were studied. Case studies were drawn from the various sectors—land and housing, trade and commerce, farming, energy, transport, water and environmental health. The preliminary results revealed that the informal economy has become the mainstay of the Zimbabwean economy, contributing not only to household income but also to national economic development. The conclusion is that it is difficult to speak of participation of the generality of the urban dwellers in the urban economy and leave out informality as the defining label and parameter. It is therefore proffered and emphasised that the informal sector plays an incubator role for innovation towards creating an acceptable and appropriate economy in that economic indicators such as the gross domestic product and per capita income are reference points for growth, investment in Zimbabwe and comparable with other countries and nations.