Collective action, urban spaces, and common goods. The concept of informality from a sociological perspective

Informality represents the growing social dimension in which many experiences of collective action take place in our urban environments. After the collapse of political parties and political institutions in terms of legitimation and trust, citizens have begun to organize themselves in unofficial forms to answer their needs. This chapter uses informality as an analytical category to understand phenomena such as the management of the so-called urban commons, and to provide evidence on the complexity, limits and virtues of non-institutionalized forms of collective civic action in contemporary urban landscapes.