Toward supported self-provisioning: Assessing the constraints and generative possibilities of informal modes of urban life

This paper develops the concept of supported self-provisioning (SSP) to critically examine how residents of structurally disadvantaged urban contexts mobilize informal practices to support livelihoods and secure essential services. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, the paper situates SSP within broader debates on informality, infrastructure, and subaltern urbanism. SSP is a hybrid form of grassroots city-making that is not entirely autonomous nor wholly dependent on the state. Instead, it emerges through negotiated relations with a range of actors, including local authorities, nongovernmental organizations, political brokers, and community organizations. By synthesizing key debates from urban scholarship, this paper outlines the material, institutional, and spatial dynamics that shape SSP. It identifies the generative possibilities of SSP, such as community cohesion, political visibility, and service innovation. It assesses the structural constraints of (unsupported) self-provisioning, including regulatory exclusion, infrastructural precarity, and uneven forms of state engagement. These generative possibilities and structural constraints help define informality as a mode of urban survival while pointing to avenues of inclusive intervention. SSP contributes to urban theory by offering a nuanced framework to understand how informality operates as a site of governance and grassroots agency. This opens theoretical and applied avenues to intervene in self-provisioning practices through informality by recognizing, legitimizing, and supporting them.