Caroline Skinner
Director, Urban Policies Programme
There is a gap between the needs of those working informally and the expertise of those charged with urban policy and planning. We need a fundamentally different approach – bottom up, incremental, flexible, economically conversant and acutely aware of, and informed by, the specific context and power dynamics.
Expertise
Urban informal economy, urban planning and design, policy analysis and critique, urban advocacy, programme/project management
Bio
Caroline Skinner directs WIEGO’s Urban Policies Programme overseeing a senior team that provides intensive city-level support to worker organizations, conducts research and policy analysis, and engages with the state to secure gains for workers. A key focus is ensuring this work feeds into the work of the global networks of workers, global policy processes, and urban practice and theory – as a route to long-term change.
Since joining WIEGO in 2009, Caroline has been involved in all three of WIEGO’s multi-city studies monitoring the impact of crises on workers in the informal economy across the Global South: the 2008/9 Global Economic Crisis, the 10-city Informal Economy Monitoring Study, the 12-city COVID-19 Crisis Study, and the current study on the impacts of climate change on home-based workers and street traders in Delhi and Bangkok and waste pickers in Brazil, with a view to strengthening resilience.
Caroline monitors trends in urban policy and planning with respect to the informal economy in general, and street trading in particular. Driven by a commitment to inclusive practice, she has an abiding interest in urban design and architectural innovations – including documenting the Warwick Junction Project in inner-city Durban and supporting the work of Asiye eTafuleni and Mahila Housing Trust.
Caroline also serves as a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and contributes to the university’s projects. She was involved in Consuming Urban Poverty and Hungry Cities, interrogating the role of the informal economy in food security. She co-convened the informal-sector group within the Employment, Income Distribution and Inclusive Growth project, which resulted in the edited volume The South African Informal Sector: Creating Jobs, Reducing Poverty and a project focused on migrants’ contribution to the economy. She has published widely on informal-economy topics and, as WIEGO’s Publications Editor, overseen the publication of more than 200 open-source publications, arguably the most comprehensive collection of work on the global informal economy.
Caroline has a long track record of policy and advocacy work at global, national, provincial and local levels. She has written policy papers for the United Cities and Local Government, the United Nations Human Settlements and Development Programmes, and advised the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. In South Africa, she has advised the South African Presidency and developed informal-economy strategies for the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. At municipal level, she has worked with the South African Local Government Association and provided technical expertise to a range of municipalities. She supports the African Association of Planning Schools and sits on the board of Cities Alliance.
Prior to joining WIEGO, Caroline was a Research Fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in the School of Development Studies.