This book is the first to provide an introductory overview to the concept of ‘urban informality’, taking an international perspective across the global North and South. It explores theoretical understandings of the term, and looks at how it affects ways of living, such as land use, housing and basic services, working lives and politics.
Using a broad range of material to bring the topic to life, including non-conventional sources – such as fiction, poetry, photography, interviews and other media – the book helps students, practitioners and scholars develop learning and research on this topic. The book also includes interjections from diverse voices of practitioners, community activists and regional experts.
from Bajamar would be relocated to Ciudadela San Antonio, and people around here think the worst of us, they say: “Here come those people from those violent neighbourhoods, they have weapons, they have all sorts of problems.” … Local universities saw us as thieves, our young people were robbers … our children were the most violent, and they wouldn’t accept them.’ Social leader in Ciudadela San Antonio, Buenaventura, Colombia, reflecting on the representation of informal neighbourhoods and their residents during a process of relocation 1 Urban informality is a
of us require resources and some support to move ahead, to improve our homes and businesses. I dream of a moment where those in power recognize and invest in our potential.’ A young woman in her 20s, reflecting on the consolidation of her informal neighbourhood in the city of El Alto, Bolivia 1 Setting the scene: why urban informality? This book takes a global approach to informality. The opening testimony illustrates how, for many people in diverse urban settings around the world, informality is characteristic to the way they live, work and govern (or
Overarching arguments and conceptual framework We hope that the preceding chapters have deepened your understanding of urban informality, enabling you to think critically about the underlying reasons for why much of the global urban population lives and works informally and engages in and/or is affected by informal politics (referred to here as governing informally), as well as what can and should be done about this. While this book has covered a wide range of ideas and discussed diverse academic, policy and alternative representations, we have made four
-help processes unfolded in Cali, Colombia 1 Globally, it is estimated that up to one billion people live in informal conditions, often in urban informal neighbourhoods. The well-known image of the favela (a term used for informal neighbourhoods within or at the outskirts of Brazilian cities) is frequently held as the archetype of informal housing, with its steep and narrow streets, precariously perched houses, and lack of electricity or running water, nestling in the hillsides surrounding the large formal metropolis. In fact, as we will see in this chapter, living
and community mobilizer in the informal neighbourhood of Mukuru in Nairobi, Kenya, reflecting on processes of community mobilization to raise awareness of poor services and infrastructure 1 Existing debates on urban informality tend to focus mainly on the dimensions of living and working informally, with less attention paid towards political elements. This chapter addresses this gap. It offers a conceptualization of governing informally and advances debates on urban informality as a tripartite concept associated with living, working and governing informally
between processes relating to living, working and governing informally. Yet from the outset, in Chapter 1 , we have acknowledged that while these categories may be helpful for ordering our knowledge, they do not always map neatly onto reality. Current and emerging approaches and alternatives to urban informality have sought to complicate and supersede the demarcations between what we have called living, working and governing informally, in this sense returning to our starting point in Chapter 1 . Recent academic work in this field highlights the usefulness of
different conceptual lenses Any response is influenced by the way we understand and think about a certain issue. Let us therefore begin by returning to core conceptual approaches to urban informality introduced in previous chapters and explore their implications for responses to informal work. As you may recall, earlier conceptualizations of urban informality deployed a dualist perspective, considering this phenomenon as marginal and separate from formality. From a dualist perspective, informality is associated with specific places (for example, street markets, or
,000 civil society representatives ( Satterthwaite, 2016 ). Its inclusive approach was expressive of more progressive attitudes towards urban informality, through its focus on housing and basic services for the urban poor ( Parnell, 2016 ). The ensuing Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements, which was discussed and endorsed by participants, recommended 64 actions, such as universal provision of adequate water and sanitation, and resulted in commitments from national governments ( Satterthwaite, 2016 ). One of the major outcomes of Habitat I was the creation of the UN
comprehensive approach on the urban informal economy At this stage, it should be clear that informal work comprises a range of activities beyond the informal sector and describes a day-to-day reality for a significant proportion of the global workforce. Moving beyond a focus on informal sector and employment, current scholarship puts emphasis on the need to study the informal economy, a concept that refers to ‘all units, activities and workers so defined and the output from them’ ( Chen, 2012 : 8). Crucially, the informal economy comprises both the informal sector and
