A narrative review of post-pandemic informal participation among marginalized urban residents in community governance

Abstract

Urban community governance has undergone profound restructuring amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with marginalized urban residents increasingly relying on informal participation practices as formal channels were disrupted. This narrative review synthesizes 22 peer-reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2025 to examine the forms, facilitators, and barriers of informal participation among marginalized urban residents in post-pandemic urban community governance. Adopting a micro-analytic, community-centered lens, the review identifies four core typologies of informal participation: grassroots mutual aid networks, place-based community organizing, informal peer and intergenerational support, and digitally-mediated civic engagement. Key facilitators include pre-existing social capital, relational trust, and institutional co-production frameworks, while critical barriers encompass structural socioeconomic inequalities, digital and linguistic exclusion, legal precarity and institutional distrust, and gendered time poverty. An integrative analytical framework is developed to illustrate how contextual conditions shape participation forms and subsequent inclusive governance outcomes, conditioned by overarching structural power dynamics. Theoretically, it advances participation scholarship by reframing informal organizing not as a binary opposition to state governance, but as a context-contingent practice negotiated within asymmetrical institutional power structures. Practically, it provides actionable pathways for policymakers to design inclusive, culturally responsive urban governance systems. This review addresses critical empirical gaps in pandemic-era civic participation and centers the lived experiences of marginalized urban populations in reshaping community resilience.