Most neighborhoods in cities of the Global South are largely characterized by unplanned or informal nature of physical development. This characteristic has led to the involvement of informal means of providing urban services and infrastructure in such places. This study examined the nature of local arrangements for infrastructure provision in four selected neighbourhoods of Zaria, a city in Northern Nigeria. The study adopted a largely qualitative approach of research, using observations, interviews and group discussions involving major stakeholders in each neighbourhood. The study findings revealed that each neighbourhood had their respective approach to infrastructure provision, as residents were found engaged in self-help initiatives like individual efforts, manual labour, household financial contributions, lobbying power, and the use of Community Development Associations (CDA), towards improving their environment and gaining access to basic urban services in the area of water supply, power, street and drainage improvement, solid waste collection and disposal. The outcomes of the individual neighbourhood efforts yielded varying levels of success and challenges. The study findings led to the conceptualization of the logic of neighbourhood collective influence in self-help initiatives, where the nascent, post-nascent and stabilized types of unplanned neighbourhoods were identified. This categorization showed that population size, population influence, and the capacity for organization determines the outcomes of collective self-help efforts in urban infrastructure services provisioning and maintenance. The study recommended among other things, that governance institutions should do more in assisting unplanned neighborhoods with technical and financial support as residents engage in self-help efforts towards improving their neighbourhood infrastructure and services. This will help make such self-help efforts to be easily upgraded into the formal city system of infrastructure.