Urban Informality Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

- by and +1
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- Architecture, Urbanization, Refugee Camps, Urban Informality

“Informal Communities and Cannabis Regulation in the Emerald Triangle”, chapter for "The Illegal, the Immoral and the Criminal: Transnational Perspectives on Informality", edited by Polese A., Russo A., Strazzari F.,... more

“Informal Communities and Cannabis Regulation in the Emerald Triangle”, chapter for
"The Illegal, the Immoral and the Criminal: Transnational Perspectives on Informality", edited by Polese A., Russo A., Strazzari F.,
Palgrave&MacMillan, 2018 (in print)

- by Jonathan Anjaria
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- Southeast Asian Studies, Urban Anthropology, Urban Studies, Urban Informality

This paper examines how informality is utilised in the branding of urban kampong and how this reshapes kampong development in the context of the Global South. We examine the case of Suci area, Bandung, which the local government relabelled as a 'creative tourism kampong' in order to rejuvenate the identity of the long-established businesses in the area. Informality is thus strategically used to develop the brand identity of the kampong. The brand of 'creative kampong' is used to reflect that deprived communities residing in the kampongs can participate in the local development agenda for promoting the creative economy. However, the policy strategies have not gone beyond relabelling the name: the characteristics and potentials from informality in the kampong are not aligned with and translated into actions to promote creativity and innovation in the existing local enterprises. As the result, the branding strategy could not develop awareness and esteem about the brand ...

- by Dinar Ramadhani
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- Urban Planning, Creative Industries, Urban And Regional Planning, Creative City
- by marcio araujo
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- Urban Sociology, Etnography, Sociologia Urbana, Sociología Del Trabajo

The informal economy is typically understood as being outside the law. However, this article develops the concept 'social uses of the law' to interrogate how informal workers understand, engage and deploy the law, facilitating the development of more nuanced theorizations of both the informal economy and the law. The article explores how a legal victory over the Johannesburg Council by reclaimers of reusable and recyclable materials at the Marie Louise landfill in Soweto, South Africa shaped their subjectivities and became bound up in struggles between reclaimers at the dump. Engaging with critical legal theory, the author argues that in a social world where most people do not read, understand, or cite court rulings, the 'social uses of the law' can be of greater import than the actual judgement. This does not, however, render the state absent, as the assertion that the court sanctioned particular claims and rights is central to the reclaimers' social uses of the law. Through the social uses of the law, these reclaimers force us to consider how and why the law, one of the cornerstones of state formation, cannot be separated from the informal ways it is understood and deployed. The article concludes by sketching a research agenda that can assist in developing a more relational understanding of the law and the informal economy.

- by Melanie Samson
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- Critical Legal Theory, Urban Informality, Informality, Waste Pickers

Urinboyev, R., 2017. Migration and Transnational Informality in Post-Soviet Societies: Ethnographic Study of ‘Po rukam’ Experiences of Uzbek Migrant Workers in Moscow. In: A.-L. Heusala and K. Aitamurto, eds. Migrant Workers in Russia:... more

- by Rustamjon Urinboyev
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- Rural Sociology, Central Asian Studies, Post-Soviet Studies, Social Norms

Unsanctioned, unscripted, and seemingly “undesirable” activities have long appropriated urban spaces in routine and sometimes unexpected ways, bringing new meanings and unforeseen functions to those places. In the last decade or so, such practices have inspired a growing movement under the banner of DIY and tactical urbanisms. The growing acceptance of these practices creates important openings in the formalized planning systems for greater flexibility and expedient change. Yet, the institutionalization of previously informal and even subversive acts has resulted in concerns regarding co-optation and de-politicization. This special issue seeks to pivot a refocus towards these unsanctioned and unscripted urban activities as a form of counter-hegemonic spatial practices, distinct from its professionalized and institutionalized counterpart. A range of cases is examined here sharing similar characteristics as challenges against the prevailing social and political paradigm. Key findings include the scalability of guerrilla actions, the fluid shift between overt and covert actions, and the linkage between everyday struggles and organized resistance. This special issue is intended to advance our understanding of urban design by situating it in a broader social, economic, and political praxis that encompasses both formal and informal practices performed by a wide variety of individual and collective actors.

- by Jeffrey Hou
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- Spatial Practices, Urban Design, Insurgent Planning, Urban Informality

近年來產業群聚逐漸成為台灣經濟、地理、都市規劃、與公共政策學界討論的熱門議題。然而，目前國內大部分討論群聚的文獻，鮮少從工廠用地是否合乎土地使用規範來區別其研究對象，因此難以深入理解未登記工廠進行的生產活動與效果。另一方面，少數探討未登記工廠的文獻又只關心如何將其合法化的問題，同樣未能解釋非正式產業聚落可能產生的創新效應，以及其與都市發展的關係。為了回應上述的理論疑點，本文選擇新北市塭仔圳地區作為研究對象，提出核心問題如下：非正式產業聚落在某個地區的形成與演變，是否有其空間與社會的邏輯？這個邏輯如何有助於我們重新認識都市化過程？通過檢視新莊金屬製造業之群聚發展、塭仔圳工廠之跨域生產網絡、自然環境對廠房供需機制的影響，以及地方政府對未登記工廠的處理等面向，本文指出，塭仔圳是製造業廠商與地主在新莊都市化過程中，挪用了時間－空間縫隙所創造的「臨時性棲地」。這個棲地和新莊金屬製造業的發展密不可分，也是新莊都市化過程中不可或缺的一個「拼裝體」。
In recent years, industrial agglomeration is increasingly becoming a major issue in the academic fields of economics, geography, urban planning and public policy in Taiwan. Most studies, however, merely focus on the effects of agglomeration taking place in institutional industrial districts, overlooking the industrial clusters composed by undocumented factories spreading all over Taiwan. On the other hand, those few studies concerned with undocumented factories tend to treat these issues from the perspective of administrative management, neglecting the possible effects of agglomeration these undocumented factories might produce and their relations to documented factories. In responding to such theoretical gap, the present study looks at the undocumented factories in Wenziazun, New Taipei, exploring the relations among industrial agglomeration, creative milieu and informal landscape. This study asks a fundamental question: As a component of urban social and spatial assemblage, how is Wenzaizun related to Xinzhuang’s urban development? By analyzing the development of manufactural industry clusters in Xinzhuang, the production network of factories in Wenzaizun, the supply-demand mechanism of factory buildings, and the ways local government manages undocumented factories, this study suggests that Wenzaizun is best understood as a “temporary habitat” where business owners and land owners appropriate a time-space interstices during Xinzhuang’s urbanization process. This habitat is inseparable from the development of metal manufactural industry in Xinzhuang, and it is an indispensable “assemblage” in the industrialization process of Xinzhuang.

Conventional models of clientelism often assume poor voters have little or no choice over which local broker to turn to for help. Yet communities in many clientelistic settings are marked by multiple brokers who compete for a following. Such competition makes client choices, and the preferences guiding such choices, pivotal in fueling broker support. We examine client preferences for a pervasive broker—slum leaders—in the context of urban India. To identify resident preferences for slum leaders, we conducted an ethnographically informed conjoint survey experiment with 2,199 residents across 110 slums in two Indian cities. Contra standard emphases on shared ethnicity, we find residents place heaviest weight on a broker's capability to make claims on the state. A survey of 629 slum leaders finds client-preferred traits distinguish brokers from residents. In highlighting processes of broker selection, and the client preferences that undergird them, we underscore the centrality of clients in shaping local brokerage environments.

- by Adam Auerbach
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- Urban Politics, India, Urban Informality, Political Clientelism

Approaching the informal construction and extension of infrastructures through the terrain of what I term “the incremental” opens up new platforms of analysis for post- colonial urban systems. This refers to ad hoc actions on the part of slum dwellers to connect to energy networks or carve out informal living spaces. I argue that incre- mentalism is produced and subsequently secured and scaled through material config- urations that seek to test and prefigure new forms of infrastructure and accompanying resource flows. I use a case study of energy and housing systems in a low-income neighborhood in Accra to define and examine these incremental infrastructures. I examine shifts in the Accra energy network as urban dwellers rework connections to flows of electricity. I also consider the material adjustment of housing and the role of cooperation in responding to threats of demolition and displacement. Together, incremental infrastructures and the ways that they are constituted articulate a prefigurative politics in which residents seek to generate access to new infrastructural worlds.

- by Jonathan Silver
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- Development Studies, Urban Planning, Urban Studies, Ghana

This paper explores Tirana's growth as a process of urban block formation across two starkly differentiated ideological periods: the socialist (1945-1991) and the post-socialist (1992-present). It examines the effects of this ideological shift on Tirana's urban development presented as an informal morphogenetic process of block deconstruction; a process with major implications for pedestrian and vehicular circulation, building accessibility, land use, land parcelling and building form. The evolution of Tirana's block layout is explored through three neighbourhood case studies comprising blocks arranged according to Soviet planning models. These were originally formed as semi-perimeter or free standing residential blocks with large public open spaces enclosed within or around the block. Tirana's growth has been dramatically shaped by the sudden shift in the ruling ideology and capacity of planning authorities, leading to almost a tripling of the capital's population in less than a decade, through the systematic appropriation of open space by newcomers in need of somewhere to live, local opportunists and speculative developers. The paper uses the capital city as a case study to comment on the morphological dimension of social change in post-socialist Albania and the way in which 'planned 'and 'unplanned' urban environments have contributed to the emergence of distinctive modes of urban life.

- by Dr. Blerta Dino
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- Albanian Studies, Urban Morphogenesis, Post-Socialism, Urban Informality

With more than half the world’s population living in urban areas which accounts for just under 3% of the world’s land mass, today’s cities face an ever evolving urban crisis. Hong Kong, renowned for its high density
urbanism, was culminated by its now demolished Kowloon Walled City. With living conditions similar to the notorious Walled City, today’s subdivided apartments, locally called ‘butchered flats’, are homes to some 200,000 people, accommodating families in crowded environments, which in some instances, are barely 10 square metres.
The culture of congestion with its spatial and programmatic juxtapositions of the Walled City have continued to manifest today in the city’s composite building typology such as Chungking Mansions and Mirador Mansion situated in Kowloon. With kungfu schools alongside travellers guesthouses, garment factories next to restaurants, private dwellings near social clubs, all occurring along a common corridor above ground, these buildings exhibit certain unexpected orders within apparent disorder. Here, seemingly opposing activities co-exist with legal, illegal, or even extralegal operations, with intricate business networks of various suppliers or retailers in the podium serving the ‘shop-houses’ within the tower above. This produces a sense of a dense ‘city within a building’, whereby the outside pervades the inside, the city enters into domesticity, public blurs with the private, collective contest with the individual, and informalities become formalized.
This paper seeks to re-examine Hong Kong’s composite building typology and its underlying informally-formal urban orders by mapping such unexpected ecologies to reveal the messy vitality of their invisible socio-economic networks within interiorized urban conglomerations. By interrogating these buildings in this manner we can further understand their potential to impact the way we perceive the city, as well as how they can productively foster these unexpected yet everyday practices.

- by Adrian Lo
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- Architecture, Urban Studies, Urbanism, Hong Kong

È possibile immaginare una geografia dei margini, ovvero una geografia capace di criticare fortemente la ragion spaziale classica, capace di emergere dai vuoti delle mappe e soprattutto capace di restituire le fluide e conflittuali... more

Il lavoro di ricerca sulla questione migrante nel NIL Lodi Corvetto si è avvalso dell'approccio etnografico. Una fase preliminare di analisi di dati secondari relativi alle caratteristiche demografiche del quartiere ha fornito lo sfondo alla fase di osservazione sul campo. Il lavoro etnografico vero e proprio ha avuto luogo nel mese di giugno 2018, trascorso interamente nel quartiere grazie all'ospitalità del Residence Sociale "Aldo Dice 26x1". L'obbiettivo dell'osservazione sul campo era quello di investigare gli aspetti che connotano l'esperienza migrante a Lodi Corvetto, ovvero una delle aree di Milano maggiormente interessate dalla dinamica migratoria. L'osservazione si è concentrata sugli elementi virtuosi che possono agevolare le fasi di approdo, stabilizzazione e integrazione dei migranti nel contesto urbano e le criticità che emergono con riferimento, dal un lato, a pratiche e forme di organizzazione dei migranti e, dall'altro, all'azione pubblica che ad essi è indirizzata. Con queste finalità, l'investigazione ha riguardato due sfere principali: a) l'esperienza abitativa dei migranti, quale dimensione cruciale del percorso migratorio in fase di approdo e radicamento (dove la stessa è stata declinata in senso ampio, ad abbracciare non solo le pratiche abitative, ma anche pratiche, luoghi e funzioni che, più in generale, compongono il quotidiano dei migranti di Lodi Corvetto); (b) gli attori locali la cui azione è rivolta al, intercetta anche il o si imbatte accidentalmente nel fenomeno migratorio.

Studies of informal street vending in the Global South often investigate grassroots resistance to formal and informal power as a collective and organised phenomenon. In our case study in the megacity of Dhaka, we show collective resistance is not possible due to an overwhelming threat from a coercive state. Informal vendors must resort to other tactics to appropriate public space to preserve their livelihoods. This is achieved by street vendors entering into locally embedded social and economic relations with agents of the state working informally to extort regular payments from them in return for access to public space. These local relations work in opposition to the neoliberalising ambitions of the state to clear and sanitise public space. Vendors look to local police and petty criminals for livelihood security rather than each other. This atomisation, reinforced by the culture of suspicion and kinship insularity, prevents vendors from organising across local boundaries to press claims for greater protection from the state. We argue that in cases where formal power is acting informally, this need to be taken into account to understand the social and economic realities of informal trade and the subsequent obstacles to collective action by the poor in cities such as Dhaka.

- by Peter Walters
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- Human Geography, Urban And Regional Planning, Cities, Urban Informality

Historical research is challenging when studying informal spaces like urban slums, where extant scholarship is limited, government data are sparse or absent, and populations change rapidly due to eviction, environmental shocks, and the everyday churn of migration. Moreover, written materials and political ephemera generated within slums are rarely preserved in accessible state archives, limiting the usefulness of conventional archival research. In such contexts, the discovery of informal ar-chives—unmapped, non-systematized collections of materials kept by individuals and groups in the spaces under study—can contribute to the reconstruction of local histories. This article draws on 20 months of fieldwork in India's urban slums to offer insights on the collection and use of informal archival materials. These materials afford an intimate look at how the urban poor organize and make claims on the state. Their analysis, however, involves inferential challenges. Researchers must consider how processes of production, preservation, and provision shape the content of gathered historical materials and thus the inferences that can be drawn from them. Beyond urban slums, informal archives are likely to be useful sources of historical data for a range of studies in comparative politics, especially those that focus on informal institutions and local quotidian politics.

- by Adam Auerbach
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- Comparative Politics, Archival Studies, India, Urban Informality

Die Stadtentwicklung im 21. Jahrhundert wird sich immer mehr auf die Stärkung und Freisetzung der Selbstorganisationskräfte und der Kreativität der Stadtgesellschaft stützen.
In X-Town, einer Stadt mitten in Europa, wurden alte Grundsätze der Planung revidiert und neue Modelle und Instrumente entwickelt, durch die informelle Aktivitäten und ihre Akteure stärker zu Trägern von Stadtentwicklungsprozessen geworden sind. In dem Szenario für das Jahr 2025 wird deutlich, was es heißt, Planung stärker als Nicht-Planung sowie Nichtwissen und Unschärfe, Improvisation und Loslassen als wichtige Orientierungswerte zu begreifen.

- by Stephan Willinger and +1
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- Creative Cities, Urban Development, Partizipation, Urban Informality

Approaches utilised to identify physical characteristics of informal settlements are mainly based on standards and approaches applied by formal planning theories (for example see Dovey 2012, Arefi, 2011, Suditu and Valceanu 2013). Subsequently, planning and development that follow these approaches remain highly connected on those produced by the formal system, which are proven to be less effective in resolving urban issues and challenges.
Traditionally, typologies have focused on aspects such as building forms, land tenure, and occupation status. As a guideline, criteria based on suggestions made by Dovey and King (2011) about urban morphology of informal settlement and Jones (2015) regarding typologies of informal settlements. Instead of using the common features utilised in assessing formal settlements such as land uses, infrastructures, open space, hierarchy of centres, blocks and zones, this paper applies Jones’s criteria on general as well as unique characteristics of informal settlements. These are expressed in housing, alleyways, setbacks, drainage and water connection, economy activities, provision of electricity, sanitation, public private interface and governance. This includes an analysis on types, materials, uses, design, placement, quality, and service coverage of each typology. In this case, four locations of informal settlements in Jayapura City, Papua, Indonesia are examined. Combining these approaches in analysing physical characteristics of informal settlement, the analysis produces both general and detail explanation in how adaptive and responsive built forms, patterns and structures are developed and established in the informal settlements. Furthermore, this research provides relevant recommendations in terms of enhancing the quality of life for urban residents in developing countries.

- by ninik suhartini
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- Urban Informality
- by Luca Pattaroni
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- Social Sciences, Human Rights, Property Law, Law and Development
- by Haim Yacobi
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- Urban Planning, Israel/Palestine, Urban Studies, Gated Communities

A discourse analysis of court documents in slum-related cases from the past 25 years leads to the conclusion that the basic statement that “slums are illegal” is a very recent juridical discourse and the rise of court orders to demolish slums in Dehli is due to reinterpretation of nuisance law. The “new nuisance discourse” that arose in the early 2000s re-problematised slums as nuisances and became the primary mechanism by which slum demolitions take place at present. The paper draws conclusions on how civil law is used to violently re-create urban space in the interests of private property owners.

- by Asher Ghertner
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- Discourse Analysis, Urban Geography, Development Studies, Political Ecology

La investigación aborda las consecuencias espaciales y sociales que acarreó la “titulación sin urbanización” en el Área Metropolitana de Lima. Se plantea que este fenómeno se trataría de una dinámica inducida por el Estado y que retarda... more

- by Diana Torres Obregón
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- Urban Informality, Human Settlements, Public Policy

This article investigates how rent gaps are created in Beirut, Lebanon, and makes a two-fold argument. First, it argues that rent gaps are created by state-legitimized power and agents of capital through the legal framework, and that the role of location in deter- mining differences between potential ground rents, so salient in Beirut, demonstrates the complementarity of neoclassical land rent theory and rent gap theory. Second, it argues that beyond the legal framework, rent gaps in Beirut are formed through informal, illegal and exceptionalist practices as well as civil, sectarian conflict and forced displacement. This extends the range of forces to consider when thinking about what creates and shapes rent gaps. The paper emphasizes the necessity of a critical perspective on the ways in which value in urban space is created in the interests of the state and agents of capital, while attuning rent gap theory to a more global perspective.

- by Marieke Krijnen
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- Real Estate, Sociology, Geography, Human Geography

Resumen El presente texto realiza un análisis historiográfico intentando abarcar la literatura existente sobre la urbanización informal en territorio europeo, comparando textos que describen este tipo de fenómenos en Francia, Reino Unido. Se propone como una herramienta abierta que, describiendo en breves líneas las particularidades de los procesos informales en dichos países, y las políticas urbanísticas llevadas a cabo frente a ellos, permita ulteriores investigaciones de tipo comparativo sobre el fenómeno de la informalidad, entendido de un modo amplio, entre el contexto brasileño y europeo. Informal urbanization in Europe in the twentieth century: a historiography Abstract The article presents an historiographical analysis trying to embrace the existing literature on informal urbanization in European territory. Comparing texts that describe this type of phenomena in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, the former Yugosla-via, Russia, Germany, Austria, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The text is proposed as an open tool that, describing in a few lines the particularities of informal processes in those countries, and the urban policies carried out to answer them, allows further comparative research on the phenomenon of informality, understood in a broad way, between the Brazilian and European context.

- by Noel A . Manzano Gómez
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- Urban History, State Theory, Slums Studies, Urban Informality
- by Andreas Scheba
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- South Africa, Urban Informality, Rental Housing, Backyard

Algunos factores asociados a la informalidad pueden ayudar a la construcción de ciudades inclusivas. El reciente aumento de esa informalidad, provocado por
la creciente migración, hace fundamental trabajar en su adaptación a las ciudades para reducir su vulnerabilidad ante las probables situaciones de crisis. Así, trabajar para lograr el Objetivo 11 de los ODS no solo satisfaría, con carácter de urgencia, las necesidades de los desplazados, sino que, además, facilitaría su inclusión en esas ciudades. Para aumentar este aspecto es necesaria la convivencia de tres factores importantes: la inclusión urbana, la social y la económica. Para exponer esta situación, se plantea un análisis de diferentes prácticas ejemplarizantes de intervenciones en informalidades cuidadosamente seleccionados en América Latina y el Caribe que abordan estos aspectos. Dichos casos comparten una transferibilidad que va allá de reproducir sus metodologías o herramientas, ya que sobrepasan la construcción física del espacio, fortaleciendo los lazos comunitarios, aspecto que aumenta su calidad de vida actual y podría ser esencial para favorecer la adaptabilidad frente a problemas futuros.

- by Revista Bitácora Urbano Territorial
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- Resilience, Social Inclusion, Resiliencia, Urban Informality

The urban population of India has grown by 32% in the last decade (Census of India 2011), and the struggle to find affordable shelter in major cities becomes increasingly more difficult, especially for the poor who make up a fourth of city dwellers. While one in three urban Indians rent, more than four out of five tenants have no written agreement or contract with their landlord (NSSO 2010) . This paper uses qualitative and quantitative methods to draw insights on the rules and functioning of rental submarkets in informal settlements, using data from a survey conducted in two informal settlements in Hyderabad, India between January 2014 and April 2014. The inter-disciplinary framework draws on the theories of institutions from economics and sociology to analyse the intricate relations between landlords and tenants, as well what holds these oral agreements in place. While family connections and social networks are the predominant path to access housing in informal settlements, in about a fifth of the cases landlords and tenants were found to have no previous association. There is some evidence to suggest that absentee landlords may charge higher rents as compared to Resident Landlords, which can be attributed to higher monitoring costs for the former, and non-price discrimination on the part of the latter.

Equitable Land Use for Asian Infrastructure identifies policies that can balance the rights and interests of first peoples, informal settlers, and rural landowners against the development imperatives of land procurement for the greater public good. The collected chapters propose and assess promising models that might be customized to local conditions, such as long-term land leasing with options to buy. This timely volume will be insightful for policy makers, practitioners, academics, and students interested in instructive case studies of the state of Asian land registration, eminent domain, and redevelopment in situations of vulnerable communities.

- by nerxhana tallushi
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- Urban Informality

Drawing from the cases of housing squats in Rome and Turin, this article analyses potentialities and limitations of the extra-institutional refugee settlements, as well as their fate after the restrictive turns of the 2018 security decree. Building on international literature on urban informality, we highlight the social value of informal housing, as well as the importance of building on these initiatives rather than erasing them. By combining ethnographic observations, interviews and policy analysis, we compare squatting and eviction in these two urban contexts. Those experiences illustrate the key role of informal housing in the emergence of grassroots forms of social support and «acts of citizenship». Whilst those spaces are considered «unliveable» by securitarian narratives, their eviction often results in an increased vulnerability of an already vulnerable population.

- by enrico fravega and +2
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- Securitization, Urban Informality, Non linear narratives, Squatting

Informality is usually defined as the whole practices that escape from the state and the radar of the administrations. Yet, informality is not invisible and causes conflicts around the way it is possible to produce knowledge about it. The article, which focuses on slums upgrading policies in Madrid (Spain) since the 1960s, sheds light on urban informality by locating itself at the crossroads of two types of literature: the anthropol- ogy of ignorance and the sociology of public policies. It shows how the institutionalization of these resorption policies was based on the constitution of important statistical and mapping devices but that a large part of the phenomenon (the big slum of the Cañada Real Galiana) was deliberately left out of these official public knowledge devices in order to avoid putting on the political agenda what appeared to be a reserve of informal- ity necessary to host of populations evicted elsewhere. It also shows that residents have mobilized to resist this exclusion and produce alternative knowledge about their neighbourhood. The article concludes that shantytowns, and more generally urban informality, are at the crossroads of processes of formalization and informalization that overlap on struggles for the production of knowledge or ignorance.

- by Thomas AGUILERA
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- Cartography, Statistics, Urban Planning, Illegality (Anthropology)

Urban homelessness is one the fastest growing and paradoxically least studied issues in the developing world. Conservative estimates suggest that there are at least 150,000 homeless in Delhi. As of 2010, the existing shelters accommodated only around 10,000 homeless. In 2010 we conducted one of the few instances of research on homeless at Nizamuddin Basti Delhi that looked at the homeless as a rooted group of inhabitants within a specific area rather than as a transient population. The research involved two months of daily field observation of the homeless in Nizamuddin Basti and the impact of the forced dislocation on their lives. The research findings revealed that far from being indifferent to the space they occupied, space was as a critical resource for the homeless. This has implications for how the spatial infrastructure for the homeless needs to go beyond an exclusive focus on monolithic night shelters to a more enabling and integrated mix of urban services. The findings were documented in ' the city is our Home' . We are now in the next stage of the action-research, evolving methods and identifying partners to implement interventions on the field and through policy frameworks.

- by Amritha Ballal
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- Homelessness, Urban Planning, Affordable Housing, Urban Poverty

The racial and cultural politics of land and property are central to urban struggle, but have received relatively little attention in geography. This paper analyzes land struggles in Detroit where over 100,000 parcels of land are classified as " vacant ". Since 2010, planners and government officials have been developing controversial plans to ruralize Detroit's " vacant " neighborhoods as part of a program of fiscal austerity, reigniting old questions of racialized dispossession, sovereignty, and struggles for liberation. This paper analyzes these contentious politics by examining disputes over a white businessman's proposal to build the world's largest urban forest in the center of a Black majority city. I focus on how residents, urban farmers, and community activists resisted the project by making counterclaims to vacant land as an urban commons. They argued that the land is inhabited not empty and that it belonged to those who labored upon and suffered for it. Combining community-based ethnography with insights from critical property theory, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory, I argue that land struggles in Detroit are more than distributional conflicts over resources. They are inextricable from debates over notions of race, property, and citizenship that undergird modern liberal democracies and ongoing struggles for decolonization.

- by Sara Safransky
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- Political Ecology, Urban Planning, Critical Race Theory, Property
- by Jeannette Sordi
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- Climate Change, Landscape Architecture, Green Infrastructure, Urban Planning

Stefano Portelli è un antropologo, che vive a Roma. L'ho incontrato per la prima volta il 15 agosto 2015 durante la Processione dell'Assunta all'Idroscalo. Uno di quegli incontri in cui la curiosità verso il prossimo scatena quel feeling... more

This study explores the concepts of sustainability within the context of South African secondary cities. Mthatha is a secondary city located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Mthatha is identified by its location and relevance as a regional urban centre for the surrounding smaller towns and rural enclaves within a 50km radius. The objective of the study is to investigate concepts of sustainability as enabling factors of development in secondary cities.
This study argues that the concept of sustainability, which can be traced back to the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987), has been applied to and focus mainly on development of Megacities. This study argues for the application of sustainability principles to smaller, but growing secondary cities using Mthatha as a case study. The study argues that secondary cites like Mthatha face developmental problems arising from urban development. Sustainability, urban studies, rural-urban migration and informality theories are evaluated to determine their inherent effect on sustainable spatial and infrastructural development. A mixed method approach is utilised as a methodology in this study. The approach is grounded in qualitative methodology, and also uses quantitative data generated from the participants and case study. This is achieved by using direct observations, interviews and survey questionnaires to inform the research, and guidelines are formulated by triangulating the data collected in response to the issues that are identified.
The key findings in the study are that secondary cities are important urban centres that the majority of the world urban population will continue to reside in. The study finds that there is a lack of research in sustainability research in secondary cities. The study further reveals that the current classification of secondary cities based on a population band of 150 000 to 500 000 is limiting with regard to understanding secondary cities. Thus the study finds that one of the key characteristics of secondary cities is the influence of rural-urban migration, which is responsible for population growth. Secondary , such as Mthatha, have localized differences and no two are alike. Policy in South Africa is aligned to fostering sustainable spatial and infrastructural development in cities. However the study finds that the current spatial and infrastructural development of the secondary city Mthatha is not executed in an co-ordinated manner and very little integration is being achieved in this regard.
The study concludes by outlining a set of guidelines to be used in the City of Mthatha. This guidelines suggest actions to plan and execute spatial and infrastructural development in Mthatha that considers its urban growth, rural-urban migration and integrating the colonial city to the informal arrival city of Greater Mandela Park. It is fitting to explore the theme of sustainability and urban growth in secondary cities as they perhaps represent the two main challenges that face humanity in the twenty first century.

- by Khanya Z . Cakata
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- Sustainable Development, Rural-urban migration, Urbanism, Urban Ecology

A total of 830 million gallons (MGD) of water is supplied to the 17 million population of Delhi by the Delhi Jail Board (DJB). The water is sourced from canals bringing water from Ganga and Yamuna from the foothills of Himalayas, 9 water treatment plants (WTP's) and about 4400 tube wells, covering 82% of households in the city as per official DJB data. The areas that are not supplied with the water, majorly fall under the category of illegal settlements like slums and unauthorised colonies. These settlements depend upon sources other than the DJB network for meeting their requirements of water. While majority of slums depend on the water tankers, extraction of ground water is rampant in the unauthorised colonies by installing bore-wells.
There are about 1797 unauthorised colonies in Delhi with an estimated population of 4 million, which is about 25% of the entire population of the city. Being illegal settlements, the unauthorised colonies are not provided with the water supply or other infrastructural services until they are regularised. Consequently, only 847 (about 50%) unauthorised colonies falling under the regularised category are supplied with the piped water by the DJB. As per the survey conducted by the Author as part of his Ph.D. on the Informal Housings, 67% of the residents are drawing underground water, while 31% are getting water from the DJB and a small section of 2% is dependent upon tankers. The survey indicated that a majority of the unauthorised colonies are largely dependent upon the illegal bore-wells to meet their water requirement. The underground water in Delhi is brackish and severely polluted, moreover, its extraction is illegal for the private use. Despite that millions of unregulated bore-wells are installed in the unauthorised colonies with possible ramifications on the health of the people as well as the depletion of the aquifers. While, the illegal water supply in the unauthorised colonies has its own issues the centralised water supply by the DJB lacks in the quantity, quality and cost effectiveness. The large size of the city results in the high pumping, storage and maintenance costs along with the substantial loss due to leakages in the supply network. Moreover, the supply is intermittent specially in summers and the water is also not potable in many cases. In the absence of centralised water supply in the unauthorised colonies and considering the related issues, it is imperative that a solution is worked out, to permit and regulate the underground extraction of water in these settlements and improvise the system to address the purification of impurities and recharge of the aquifers. This paper studies the existing supply of water in the unauthorised colonies and attempts to provide a regulatory model for the same.

Taken together, C.L.R. James’ 1933 political pamphlet The Case for West Indian Self-Governmentand 1936 novel Minty Alley reveal James’ competing visions of relations between Africans and Indians in the British West Indies. In The Case for West Indian Self-Government, James proclaims that West Indian societies are fit to govern their own affairs because they are modern and harmonious. However, James’ argument in The Case for West Indian Self-Governmentcontradicts his literary sketches of the barrack yard. Minty Alley features a fractious relationship between Benoit and Mrs. Rouse, the owners of the yard. Mrs. Rouse responds to Benoit’s infidelity by remarking, “my blood and coolie blood don’t take.” They fight over ownership of No. 2 Minty Alley. But, when Benoit dies, Mrs. Rouse buries him at the yard. Minty Alley portrays a barrack yard politics, made through the combined—if tense—efforts of African and Indian descendants.

Özet: Yapıya ait hurdanın yeniden kullanıma sunulduğu alanlar olarak tanımlayabileceğimiz çıkmacılar, İstanbul'da 20. yüzyılın özellikle ikinci yarısındaki enformel kentleşme ile 2000 sonrasında ivme kazanan neoliberal kentleşme süreçlerinin arakesitinde yer alır. Çıkmacılar, gecekondu yapılaşmasının kendi imkansızlıklarından türemiş bir aktör olarak enkazdan kurtarılan pencere, kapı ve vitrifiye gibi yapı elemanlarının biriktiği ve yeniden dolaşıma sokulduğu kişi ya da yerler olarak tariflenebilir. Gece-kondu, kentsel dönüşüm ve mahalle yıkımları ile ilişkilenen bu hurdalıklar, kentin çeperlerinde yer alan semtlerde karşımıza çıkıyor. İstanbul'un kentsel dönüşüm coğrafyasından hareketle küresel ile yerel ekonominin kesişiminde varlıklarını sürdürmeye çalışan çıkmacı hurdalıklarını, gecekondu yapı kültürü ile 'yıkıp yeniden yapma ve yerinden etme' mekanizmaları üzerinden işleyen totaliter kentleşmenin getirdiği yapı kültürü kapsamında inceliyoruz. Amacımız, çıkmacıların bugün kent coğrafyası ve çeperlerinde nasıl etkileri olduğunu inceleyerek kent ekolojisine ve kentsel müşterekle-rin inşasına yönelik çıkarımlara varılabilir mi sorgulamak. Bunu yaparken, çıkmacıları bir " ilişkisel altyapı " (Simone, 2015) yani fiziksel veya kamusal altyapıların yokluğun-da kent sakinlerinin hayatta kalmak ya da kente ayak uydurmak için geliştirdiği ilişki temelli çözümlere bir örnek olarak konumlandırıyoruz. Anahtar sözcükler: İstanbul ve çevresi, enkaz, ilişkisel altyapı, gayriresmî ekonomi, kentsel dönüşüm, kent ekolojisi.

- by can altay
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- Architecture, Commons, Political Ecology, Urban Planning
- by Alexander Conway
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- City Branding, City planning, Dubai, Global CIty

Developing countries today are urbanizing rapidly. As a consequence of the rapid urbanization, commercialization and consumerism, the amount of 'waste' generated is also growing tremendously-much too fast for the ability and capability of city governments. The waste of cities is therefore dumped in nearby villages, leading to protests by the villagers. The way out, according to city governments, is privatization. Private companies and corporations take over waste management in cities, thereby controlling access to waste. Consequently, waste pickers (who are invisible anyways and who traditionally have been collecting and selling scrap for generations) lose their access to scrap and to their livelihood. This is the story of waste pickers but is similar to the story of informal sector workers in all sectors of the economy. The citizens demand convenience and modernization, while city governments demand organized set ups which can rid them of their responsibility. Both these demands are met by corporations which replace traditional informal sector workers. Such is the general trend across the world, but not in the waste sector of Pune. In 1993, the waste pickers of Pune organized themselves into a registered trade union (Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat-KKPKP). One by one, the union helped them get over their own issues. It ensured that waste pickers were recognized not only as workers but also as important actors who made an essential contribution to society. Through quantification of their contribution, it forced the government to allocate resources for their medical insurance. Over time, the union has ensured that its members get all the benefits from government as well as private sector. It has also acted as an important platform for influencing policy in favour of waste pickers. Realising the needs of citizens as well as governments for better waste management, the waste pickers took the responsibility for door-to-door collection of waste. Today, nearly 2000 waste pickers of Pune are members and owners of a cooperative called SWaCH (Solid Waste Collection and Handling). The cooperative has an MOU with the Municipal Corporation to collect waste from all of Pune. In a highly unequal and unjust world, SWaCH is a model of empowerment of one of the most marginalized sections of society. 20 years ago, these waste pickers were invisible to the public and considered to be thieves by the police. Today, they claim proudly that they contribute more for the city and its economy than government employees. The KKPKP-SWaCH model shows how informal sector workers can organize not only to improve their conditions of work but also to engage more effectively in the development process. It is therefore a model of inclusive development which hinges on empowerment of informal sector workers and challenges the traditional capitalist corporate model of development. Nearly 8000 waste pickers in the city are members of a union called the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP).