This doctoral thesis is about the humane city. Using ethnographic research methods, I constitute an understanding of a humane city: a city of vulnerability, solidarity, and informal life. I have carried out ethnographic research in urban public space in Finland by volunteering at an outreach station (Article I), hanging out at a forest pub (Article II), and going along informal recyclers (Article III). The findings from these articles highlight the agency of people who manage and resist precarity in urban everyday life. In the humane city that is proposed by this thesis, the practices of people are taken seriously as a voice that constructs everyday knowledge in the city. This doctoral thesis is about the humane city. Using ethnographic research methods, I constitute an understanding of a humane city: a city of vulnerability, solidarity, and informal life. I have carried out ethnographic research in urban public space in Finland by volunteering at an outreach station (Article I), hanging out at a forest pub (Article II), and going along informal recyclers (Article III). The findings from these articles highlight the agency of people who manage and resist precarity in urban everyday life. In the humane city that is proposed by this thesis, the practices of people are taken seriously as a voice that constructs everyday knowledge in the city. The thesis reveals the centrality of particular urban places – the Kontula shopping centre (Helsinki) and the forest pub in Varissuo (Turku) – and practices – the informal recycling of cans and bottles – to the ways precarity is navigated in the city. These aspects outplayed as important sources of security and stability amidst an instable, precarious life. The thesis calls for understanding the mechanisms through which precariousness and ‘the humane’ become constructed in urban space, which is necessary for the social sustainability of our cities, and for making them more humane places to live.