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Abstract Informal settlements are central to sustainable urban futures, yet their diverse resilience pathways remain underexplored. This gap enables typology-blind policies that misdiagnose challenges and undermine community capacities. This paper develops and validates the Typology-Sensitive Framework for Socio-Technical Adaptation to address this. Applying this framework through a community-based mixed-methods approach in two distinct settlements in Kumasi, Ghana—Aboabo (residential) and Suame Magazine (industrial)—our analysis reveals how residents mobilise unique forms of agency and ingenuity. Findings show that Suame Magazine’s resilience is deeply embedded in its production-centric, occupational identity, characterised by artisanal networks and structured mutual aid. In contrast, Aboabo’s resilience hinges on a reproduction-centric logic, leveraging informal community and religious bonds to address residential needs, often through partnerships for technological upgrades. Our findings challenge monolithic portrayals of urban informality and underscore the perils of typology-blind policies. The research also examines the significant socio-technical challenges in deploying Public Participation Geographic Information Systems in resource-constrained settings, offering critical methodological insights.
Gagakuma et al. (Wed,) studied this question.