Shapig Public Space

Gendered Dynamics, Resistance, and Community Identity in the Informal Economy of the Rabidante in Tarrafal, Cabo Verde

Context

Master’s Thesis in Sustainable Emergency Architecture, UIC Barcelona

Location

Barcelona, Spain & Tarrafal, Cabo Verde

Year

2025

Materials

Text, Photographs, Maps

The research examines how Rabidante—women working as informal street vendors—shape and appropriate public space in Tarrafal, and how these practices are affected by changing urban and tourism policies. Through their everyday activities, vendors contribute to the social and economic life of the town while creating flexible and highly adaptive forms of spatial occupation. The study investigates the spatial logics behind their vending practices, including how sun and shade, pedestrian flows, customer proximity, products, mobility, available infrastructure, and daily and seasonal rhythms influence where and how vendors work. Architectural methods of drawing and mapping, combined with semi-structured interviews, participatory walks, and observation, are used to document these relationships between informal economies and the built environment. Particular attention is given to the tension between the vendors’ established use of public space and efforts to create a more ordered, tourism-oriented urban image. The research considers how formal planning and “beautification” policies regulate informal vending, while also examining the ways Rabidante adapt to, negotiate, and resist these spatial restrictions. By placing women’s everyday practices at the centre of the investigation, the project highlights informal vending not as an activity peripheral to the city, but as a practice that actively produces public space, sustains community life, and contributes to the identity and vitality of Tarrafal.