Informality plays an imperative role in offering housing for households in developing countries when the formal market cannot provide enough to keep up with residents' demands. The actors' interaction, with one another, plays an imperative role in land transactions in informal settlement areas. As informal actors operate outside the formal land transactions their activities and methods of operation are rarely understood. Therefore, based on social network theory, this paper aims to identify and examine informal actors, their functions, interactions, and power relationships in informal settlement areas. To this end, this study employed key informant interviews, focus group discussions, structured questionnaires, and a review of published literature, as well as official documents. In the study area, most residents acquired land through informal mechanisms. Major actors include farmers, local land administrators, speculators, land brokers, residents, government officials, and religious leaders. The study also uncovers that the role of each actor varies from information provision to price fixing. Their roles and interactions are governed by dynamic networks and occasionally overlap functions. Among the network actors, land brokers are considered the most influential and powerful because they possess a high degree of centrality, closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector. They hold a pivotal position in the network and act as a liaison between the network's actors. Therefore, the roles of land brokers, who often actively influence the land transaction process, should be considered in urban land governance and incorporated in policy formulation and implementation.

Informal settlements in developing countries' cities are becoming more and more widespread. The city of Burayu is no exception to this trend. To address the challenges involved, it is important to understand the reasons for the prevalence and perseverance of informal settlement. However, there is a lack of institutional and actor perspectives to investigate the process and factors driving the growth of informal settlement in Burayu city. This study investigates the process and precipitating factors underlying the growth of informal settlements based on institutions, structure and agency and social non-compliance perspectives. Primary data for this study were gathered via key informant interviews, questionnaires, and observations. Secondary data were obtained from the empirical data. This study revealed that local informal institutions such as social networking play a crucial role in the growth process of informal settlement by fostering an informal written contract of sale. The study also identified rural-urban migration, speculation, locational choice, and lack of good governance as precipitating causes for the growth of informal settlement. In addition, actors use formal institutional loopholes to engage in informal buildings. Therefore, along with government structure ineffectiveness, the behavior of informal actors' was also identified as an important, albeit often neglected, factor in the growth of informal settlements. Identifying the impact of various informal actors' behaviors on the proliferation of informal settlements is vital not only for improving relationships among actors but also for introducing relevant institutions to control informal actors to improve land governance.

Conformity with land-use planning in a city is problematic in informal settlement areas and requires the interpretation of the reasons for informal land use. This study aimed to evaluate the spatial impact of informal land use on planning, determine the extent to which such informal land use conforms with land-use plans, and the reasons for this. This study applied a case study with both a qualitative and quantitative research approach in which the quantitative spatial data in this study were explained and contextualized by qualitative data. Primary data were collected by interviews with eight informal settlers and twelve experts. The secondary data included are the proposed land-use map and the city’s parcel-based informal land-use inventory types. The findings revealed that 81% of informal houses occupied parcels of land larger than 140 m² due to demand for larger plot sizes. This led to a shortage of space for service provision. This study also found that 69.10% of informal land-use types adhered to the land-use plans. This is due to the administrator’s conscious decision to include informal land use into the city’s structural plan and the deliberate efforts of informal settlers to be part of the structural plan by obtaining information from city planners. This implies that the behavior of government and individual actors can lead informal land-use types to conform with the adopted plan.