Informalisation in Urban Spaces: Trends, Data and Analysis in Zimbabwe, presented at the REIZ Winter School in Kigali, Rwanda (July 2026). Drawing on Injecta Analytics' spatial data and analysis, this presentation traces how informalisation is reshaping Zimbabwe's urban real estate market: from Harare South, where over 10,000 houses a year rise with limited water, sewer or title, to the CBD, where 6,200+ vendors and informal transport have driven the closure of at least 11 large chain supermarkets in just two years - a collapse our block-level analysis predicted in 2024. Mapping every business, vendor and closure, the deck shows how land-use informalisation strands anchors, reprices districts, pushes tenants into residential suburbs, and quietly rewrites highest-and-best use ahead of planners and valuers. But it also shows the counter-evidence: well-managed centres that informality cannot penetrate, and a master-planned development whose first phase sold out, proof that the demand for formality never left and is strong.
Download the full presentation, with every map, below.