ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how urban informality is constituted through constant interactions with urban formality in the context of second-tier cities in South Korea. By refuting urban informality as a policy failure and a Global South–specific phenomenon, the research brings relational and processual approaches into focus and the public actors’ strategies into the conversation. Based on in-depth interviews, focus group, archives, and site visits, the chapter focusses on public actors’ spatial strategies for resilient planning. The empirical findings demonstrate, first, that both urban formality and informality emerged and were integrated in a second-tier city, Gimpo, as the post-developmental state deregulated urban growth of the Seoul Capital Area for global competitiveness. Second, public actors intentionally cultivated urban informality as a spatial strategy to survive growing global competition. By offering a contextualised understanding of urban informality as a planning paradigm, this study contributes to the debates on urban resilience for a precarious future.
