ABSTRACT

In modern architecture, the notion of 'urban encounters' has been of interest for a long time, both in practical and conceptual terms. This chapter investigates how informal markets contribute to a proliferation of transitory sites in which different market actors engage in a variety of encounters outside the formal market and prerequisites of transparency and economic calculation. Looking at informal marketplaces in Thailand, North Korea and Mexico, it describes how informal trade generates trajectories in which individuals, groups and organisations begin to interact with the forces of globalisation beyond assigned sites of proscribed urban encounter. Bringing these analyses together with an evolving body of legal and political frameworks that claim authority to intervene in these sites, the chapter demonstrates how the framing of marketplaces as informal or 'notorious' affects not only the kinds of encounters that take place there but also how control over urban informality has become a means to regulate far-reaching encounters between different economic interests.