Planning the Unplanned: Integrating the Informal Sector into Chinhoyi Municipality’s Urban Development Strategies

International audience Urban informality constitutes a structural and enduring feature of cities in the Global South, yet dominant planning paradigms continue to marginalise it. In Zimbabwe’s secondary cities, including Chinhoyi Municipality, this disjuncture is particularly acute, reflecting inherited regulatory rigidities and limited institutional capacity. Existing literature increasingly reframes informality as integral to urban resilience, but practical integration within planning systems remains uneven and under-theorised in intermediate urban contexts. Therefore, this study employs a convergent mixed-methods design, combining policy and by-law analysis with semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and a survey of informal operators, complemented by spatial mapping of economic activities. This approach enables triangulation of governance, socio-economic, and spatial dimensions of informality. Findings reveal that exclusionary planning frameworks undermine both economic productivity and governance legitimacy, perpetuating spatial injustice and institutional distrust. Despite contributing significantly to employment and service provision, informal actors remain weakly integrated into fiscal and spatial systems. However, evidence indicates strong stakeholder convergence around participatory and adaptive planning approaches. Mechanisms such as flexible zoning, incremental upgrading, and co-production demonstrate potential to reconcile regulatory order with livelihood imperatives. The study critically engages with prevailing theoretical frameworks, arguing that neither regulatory formalisation nor laissez-faire tolerance adequately addresses the complexity of informality. Instead, it advances a hybrid governance model grounded in spatial justice, adaptive regulation, and institutional co-production. This model challenges binary formal–informal dichotomies, proposing an iterative integration continuum responsive to local socio-political dynamics. Integrating informality into urban development is not optional but foundational to achieving inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urbanisation in Chinhoyi Municipality and comparable secondary cities.