The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization

The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization investigates the mutual relationship between the struggle for political inclusion and processes of informal urbanization in different socio-political and cultural settings. It seeks a middle ground between two opposing perspectives on the political meaning of urban informality. The first, the ‘emancipatory perspective’, frames urban informality as a practice that fosters autonomy, entrepreneurship and social mobility. The other perspective, more critical, sees informality predominantly as a result of political exclusion, inequality, and poverty. Do we see urban informality as a fertile breeding ground for bottom-up democracy and more political participation? Or is urban informality indeed merely the result of a democratic deficit caused by governing autocratic elites and ineffective bureaucracies? This book displays a wide variety of political practices and narratives around these positions based on narratives conceived upon specific case cities. It investigates how processes of urbanization are politicized in countries in the Global South and in transition economies. The handbook explores 24 cities in the Global South, as well as examples from Eastern Europe and East Asia, with contributions written by a global group of scholars familiar with the cases (often local scholars working in the cities analyzed) who offer unique insight on how informal urbanization can be interpreted in different contexts. These contributions engage the extreme urban environments under scrutiny which are likely to be the new laboratories of 21st-century democracy. It is vital reading for scholars, practitioners, and activists engaged in informal urbanization.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. Introduction and Acknowledgments Chapter 2. The political Meaning of Informal Urbanisation Chapter 3. AHMEDABAD. Urban Informality and the Production of Exclusion Chapter 4. ANKARA. Struggles for Housing: Legitimate, Self-Contradictory or Both? Impacts of Clientelism and Rights-Seeking on Informal Housing in Ankara Chapter 5. BALKANS. Informal settlements in the Balkans: Squatters’ magic realism vs. planners’ modernist fantasy vs. governments’ tolerance and opportunism Chapter 6. BEIRUT. Dahiye: An Active Space for Social Justice and Resistance: Re-imagining Informality in Light of Growing Urban Marginality Chapter 7. BELO HORIZONTE. New urban occupations in the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte and the struggle for housing rights Chapter 8. CAIRO. Right to the City and Public Space in Post-Revolutionary Cairo Chapter 9. FORTALEZA. Informal urbanization versus modernization: popular resistance in Fortaleza, Brazil Chapter 10. GUANGZHOU. Fewer contestations, more negotiations : A multi-scalar understanding of the ‘politics of informal urbanization’ in southern China CHAPTER 11. GUAYAQUIL. Conflicting competences in Guayaquil's contested and (in)formal periphery CHAPTER 12. HANOI. A study of informally developed housing and its role in the political arena of a post-reform communist city CHAPTER 13. HARARE. Informality and Urban Citizenship: Housing Struggles in Harare, Zimbabwe CHAPTER 14. JERUSALEM. The multifaceted politics of informality in Jerusalem at the time of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict CHAPTER 15. JOHANNESBURG. The Political Ecology of the Right to the Rainbow City Informal spaces and practices and the quest for socio-environmental rights in urbanizing Johannesburg CHAPTER 16. KHARTOUM. The Politics of Displacement in a Conflictive Polity CHAPTER 17. LIMA. Lima: Informal Urbanization and the State: The Rise and Fall of Urban Populism in Lima CHAPTER 18. MASHHAD. Claiming the right to the city: Informal urbanisation in the holy city of Mashhad CHAPTER 19. MEDELLIN. Performative infrastructures: Medellin’s governmental technologies of informality. The case of the Encircled Garden Project in Comuna 8 CHAPTER 20. MUMBAI. Profit versus People: The Struggle for Inclusion in Mumbai CHAPTER 21. NAIROBI. The Socio-Political Implications of Informal Tenement Housing in Nairobi, Kenya CHAPTER 22. PORT AU PRINCE. Haiti's Disaster Urbanism: The Emerging City of Canaan CHAPTER 23. RIO DE JANEIRO. Tackling Informality in Low-Income Housing: The Case of the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro CHAPTER 24. SÃO PAULO. Cortiços: Interstitial Urbanization in Central São Paulo 25. SÃO PAULO. Occupations: A pedagogy of confrontation: Informal building occupations in São Paulo’s central neighbourhoods CHAPTER 26. SEOUL. The evolution of informal settlers’ political gains in changing state regimes in Seoul CHAPTER 27. YOGYAKARTA. Slum dwellers strategies and tactics in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

About the Author :
Roberto Rocco is a senior Assistant Professor in the Department of Urbanism of the Delft University of Technology. He has got a degree in Architecture and Planning from the University of São Paulo and a post-graduate MSc degree in Spatial Planning from the same university. He worked as an independent researcher for NGOs in Brazil before being awarded a PhD by TU Delft in 2008, with a thesis on ‘new urban geographies of globalization’. He has published on issues of governance, sustainability, and spatial justice and currently focuses on challenges of urbanization in the Global South and the implementation and governance of the New Urban Agenda. Jan van Ballegooijen is an independent researcher and practicing architect. He received an MSc degree at Delft University of Technology in 2011, with a project focusing on the relationships between democratization and urban informality in São Paulo’s periphery. At TU Delft, he has also worked as a research assistant for the chair ‘Design as Politics’, investigating the tensions between politics and urban design. Besides his current work as an independent researcher, he is also a practicing architect in the Netherlands and Belgium. He is currently expanding his research on the relationship between urban informality and democracy.