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The juridical construction of India's Right to Life has recognized right to water and sanitation in 'informal' settlements but not right to clean environments, the latter instead applied to label them as polluters. Given past evictions based on nuisance law in Delhi, and the emerging juridical construction of Rights of Nature for River Yamuna – polluted by waste disposal – the biophysical impact of 'formal' vs. 'informal' settlements needs clarification. Water quality and land use analyses at stormwater drain-adjacent settlements in Delhi show pollution occurs upstream but becomes visible here, lending settlement residents environmental agency in an emerging Conflict of Rights scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractHousing demolition in urban villages is a contentious subject. Examining the state-informality nexus, this study argues that informality enters the tensions between interpretations of regulations as text or intent. By utilizing the two analytical categories, this paper argues that higher-level government strategically provides an ambiguous regulatory framework that enables district governments utilized informality as a strategy in the urban village redevelopment in Shenzhen. Three specific strategies were identified: finding alternatives, conceding the use value, and reinterpret ambiguous terms in the context of regulatory framework. Thus, the district government has been able to successfully promote the demolition of houses. As demonstrated in the case study, local officials should understand the intent of regulations and policies in addition to enforcing the text of them. If the intent of a regulation is not contradicted, its enforcement is feasible even if it deviates from the text. This study contributes to international debates on informal settlements and housing governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the governance and resilience of the urban street economy in Ghanaian cities as a reflection of the operational features of informality in African cities. The paper draws on a comprehensive review of secondary documents to explore the practices, policy regulation, urban governance challenges, and resilience of the street economy in urban Ghana. Findings show that eviction, relocation, harassment, and merchandise confiscation are the orthodox policy measures by city authorities for managing and regulating street vending. Nevertheless, the street economy continuously reproduces and spatially redistributes itself across the urban landscape, exemplifying its resilience despite state intolerance and repression. The paper concludes by recommending that city authorities embrace street vending, and by extension, urban informality, as a part of Southern urbanism and, therefore, develop more inclusive and less hostile policies to regulate such activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand how housing legality is negotiated and contextually constructed by investigating the highly regulated German context of Berlin. It investigates the varying tenants' experiences affected by the enforcement and abolition of the city's rental cap law (Berliner Mietendeckel-Geset), implemented between February 2020 and April 2021. The article frames the case study of Berlin in the context of legality and develops a typology of legal and illegal practices within this case. Through collecting data from 19 tenants using semi-structured interviews to identify recurring narratives and experiences, the article explores how legality is negotiated and socially constructed. The results suggest that a spectrum of gray legality emerges from these negotiations, breaking the binary view of legality in the Global North. This spectrum covers legality, semi-legality, semi-illegality, and illegality. Gray legality refers to incidents where it becomes hard to judge the complete adherence or lack of compliance with a law. Hence, this article contributes to understanding illegality as a state–society relationship defined not only by laws and regulations but also by publicly accepted practices and the often-untraceable stakeholder negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article suggests distinguishing between illegality as a practical phenomenon and informal regulations as a structuring feature of everyday life. This allows rethinking the role of the law and regulation in contexts of urban informality, showing that the law, and formality more generally, is connected to the informal in that the formal only receives its meaning and relevance through the informal. The concepts are illustrated by case material from informal housing and what is known as 'beds in sheds' in London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically reviews the literature on urban informality, inequity, health, well-being and accountability to identify key conceptual, methodological and empirical gaps in academic and policy discourses. We argue that critical attention to power dynamics is often a key missing element in these discourses and make the case for explicit attention to the operation of power throughout conceptualization, design and conduct of research in this space. We argue that: (a) urban informality reflects the exercise of power to confer and withhold advantage; (b) the dominant biomedical model of health poorly links embodied experiences and structural contexts; (c) existing models of accountability are inadequate in unequal, pluralistic governance and provision environments. We trace four conceptual and empirical directions for transformative approaches to power relations in urban health equity research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a massive investment in subsidized housing, informal settlement remains a significant aspect of urban development in Chilean cities. This paper first surveys the urban morphology of contemporary settlements in four Chilean cities to maps the extent and location of neighbourhoods that have developed informally or semi-formally. The broad pattern is that the more informal of settlements have been practically eliminated from the capital of Santiago, yet mixed informality flourishes and is expanding on the peripheries of regional cities. Four cases are then mapped and analysed to show the morphogenesis—the ways buildings and street networks are incrementally designed and produced. A range of morphogenic patterns are identified including highly irregular morphologies on escarpment conditions, semi-regular street grids, and informal encrustations within formal housing projects. It is argued that informal production will remain significant and that a better understanding of informal settlement morphology is crucial to the design and planning for the future of Chilean cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study examines how the state categorises and governs the urban poor in the Philippines, implementing different housing policies for citizens who can pay regular prices and the urban poor who cannot. Slum dwellers who cannot afford land are categorised as “underprivileged and homeless citizens” and receive state protection. Meanwhile, those considered able to afford land are classified as “professional squatters” and are subject to imprisonment and/or fines. Since the 2000s, the state protection has been via market-driven policies, which have proven insufficient as local governments and private developers relocate slum dwellers for high-end housing projects that force these dwellers to purchase relatively expensive socialised housing in suburbs with inadequate infrastructure or livelihood opportunities. This article reviews the inadequacy of state protection by examining the role of courts that might protect slum dwellers from the state’s market-driven policies. This analysis indicates that, based on the building materials of houses, the courts are likely to define slum dwellers as professional squatters. This is not necessarily an accurate reflection of their living standard, compared to income. Underprivileged and homeless citizens are easily relocated under market-driven policies, and if they resist in court, they are likely to be treated as professional squatters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe governance of informal settlements in China – primarily urban villages – remains a persistent challenge. Recently, some urban village houses have been transformed into long-term rental apartments (LRAs). This highlights a potentially novel approach to addressing the longstanding informality issue, but how the rental market in urban villages has thus been reshaped remains unknown. Examining the case of Shenzhen’s Yuanfen Village through the lens of regulating informality, this paper reveals that (1) new renovations are facilitated by the intermediary management of LRA companies with government consent; (2) the renovation into LRAs involves a balancing process among stakeholders but leaves the illegal aspects untouched; and (3) while the renovation improves the living environment, low-income households are inevitably displaced. This study contributes to a theoretical and practical understanding of regulating informality by challenging the monolithic formal-informal dichotomy and connecting the conceptualization and materialization of continuous and dynamic property rights that enable new possibilities for effective and inclusive management of urban growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate research in the Global South tends to focus on large (>10 million population) cities. However, most of the urban poor in the South live in smaller cities. The knowledge and experience of the urban poor in smaller cities is highly contextualized, therefore, knowledge about these cities and the plight of their subaltern populations and the contours of informality cannot easily be 'extrapolated' from megacities. Rather than empirical prescriptions this paper makes a methodological argument for an epistemologically just approach to engaging with those left behind through a shift towards co-producing climate knowledge with marginalized communities and their actual lived contexts in these overlooked cities. In doing so, the paper makes a case for widening the current scope of climate change research in ways that can support climate action to effectively contribute towards achieving the SDGs' commitment of leaving no one and no place behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban informality is one of the most hotly debated concepts in the fields of geography and urban studies. However, one narrative that has assumed hegemony and dominated conventional scholarship is the view that it is peculiar to the urban poor or subaltern group. In this paper, I contend that little to no empirical attention has been paid to an essential piece of the conceptual mosaic of informality. I reflect on housing informality by elites or upper-income urbanites and highlight its associated Janus-faced governance approach. I argue that the deliberate disregard and legitimization of elite informal developments pose crucial sustainability implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban informality is predominantly viewed negatively in international development discourse, with ambiguous property rights frequently blamed for various problems associated with urban informality in urban studies. To address these issues caused by ambiguity and informality, developing countries seek to establish clearly defined property rights as a legal and formal institutions. However, China offers new insights for critically evaluating the perceived necessity of formalizing ambiguous property rights in urban settings. In China, informal urban regeneration, a new type of urban informality, is thriving on allocated industrial land. This approach maintains existing land ownership while repurposing industrial buildings for new uses. This study selects three types of informal industrial land regeneration in Shanghai, revealing the nature of ambiguous property rights concerning the de jure and de facto rights of use, income generation, and transfer of land use rights. It explores how ambiguous property rights function in the redevelopment process. The Shanghai story shows that ambiguous property rights serve as a key mechanism in the operation of informal urban regeneration. The findings emphasize that radically formalizing urban informality by redefining ambiguous property rights is not necessarily a panacea. Instead, informal urban regeneration under deliberate institutional ambiguity maintained by urban governments offers an alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forms of informal urbanism, ranging from informal settlement to street vending and informal transport, have become integral to how places work across different contexts and scales. In this article, we reflect on the ethics of researching forms of urban informality, with a focus on the capacities and challenges associated with exploring informal urbanism, particularly in the context of what is considered the global South. By drawing on our experiences of investigating various forms of informality in different contexts, this article engages with ethical considerations that arise when researching informal urbanism. We argue that designing, conducting and disseminating research on forms of urban informality can pose critical ethical questions for researchers who not only strive to bring about positive change but must also exercise caution to avoid causing more harm than good by exposing individuals at risk of exploitation, eviction or displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces (dis)continuities in colonial logics across disjunctures of decolonisation and democratisation through a large infrastructure project in contemporary Lahore, Pakistan. Analysing Lahore's Orange Line Metro Train, a project constructed under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the article shows how colonial extractive and racial logics can limit the redistributive potential of typically inclusive infrastructures like mass transit by continuing to shape the conditions of their development and (re)producing precarious configurations of citizenship in the postcolony. It finds that Pakistan's colonial-era land acquisition law erased a range of land relations and rights from recognition and thus compensation by the state. In an instance of informal policy making, the state eventually created an ad hoc 'grant-in-aid' scheme to compensate landowners in informal settlements. However, the scheme continued the property centric politics of recognition embedded in the expropriation law by only compensating people with long-term land claims. The public script of the scheme invoked welfare obligations of the state but structured these through moral-legal norms of property. The postcolonial state thus bypassed the transition from colonial subjects to citizens and instead repositioned people as humanitarian subjects. The article thus highlights the contradictions of developing subsidized public infrastructure in postcolonial cities, where construction becomes another conduit of imposing land commodification and disciplining pro-poor self-built neighbourhoods that have escaped the rigidity of private property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its significance in informing inclusive political interventions in informal settlements in different political economic contexts, the urban informality literature falls short in exploring state intervention in or policy responses towards desire-based informal housing forms characterised by extralegal construction. This article uses Kaohsiung City in Taiwan as a case study to explore how the local government has collaborated with the private sector to govern the extralegal construction prevailing in community buildings. These interventions include the use of rooftop solar power systems aimed at remodelling existing buildings and green building design prototypes created to prevent future informalities. Using an urban political ecology lens, I analyse how the municipality appropriates the values and properties of solar power systems and green architecture to unite actors, relating extralegal construction to urban metabolism. I develop the concept of 'metabolic coordination' to show how the state coordinates actors, resources, technologies and capital to embed an internal circuit of funding flows governing extralegal construction in a larger external circuit of capital circulation consisting of growing solar photovoltaic and green housing markets. The adopted lens of urban political ecology interrogates three interrelated aspects of embedding informality in renewed urban space: municipal interventions remaking informalities, property-led greening of informalities and its negotiation, and inequality in accessing interventions. The city uses pragmatic and adaptive approaches to control extralegal construction. These approaches allow the city to leverage informality for growth and sustainability. However, the governing schemes create new forms of injustice and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many metropolises in the global South, unregulated/informal (kaçak) construction is not an exception in Istanbul, but rather the norm. Most recently, in a 2018 building amnesty dubbed as 'the Building Peace' (İmar Barışı), 1.8 million kaçak structures in Istanbul were pardoned by the government. Given the ubiquity of building amnesties of this sort and their failure to prevent unregulated construction, this article questions what role the concept of kaçak plays if it fails to mark a boundary between formal and informal. By tracing the long history of building amnesties and examining how Istanbulites have partook in the 2018 Building Peace, I suggest that kaçak is an ongoing conversation on value in the city. Contrary to mainstream accounts that reduce building amnesties to mere populism, I understand kaçak, a la Ayşe Buğra (1998), as an important component of a larger urban moral economy through which conceptions of justice, reciprocity, public amenity, and good life are constantly negotiated. Thinking through the negotiations over kaçak allows us to see a multi-valent urban moral economy, illustrated in the article through the example of Kuzguncuk neighborhood where ultimate legalization of kaçak housing is contingent upon resident's consent to an urban renewal project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of the informal city in Latin America has caused its own dynamics related to urban unsustainability due to the disorderly occupation of the territory. The precarious characteristics of informal neighborhoods have increased the mortality processes in their inhabitants, increasing the poverty and marginality indexes in Latin American urban settlements. This work was developed within the international research project "Modeling informality in Latin America based on indicators of sustainable urban development. Case study Yomasa, Bogotá-Colombia". This work was developed under the mixed research approach which allowed focusing on a nested concurrent design of dominant model (DIAC), which was carried out in the Santa Marta sector of the locality of Ciudad Bolivar, in Bogotá Colombia, with the participation of 20 people from the studied community and supported by 16 students of Civil Engineering of the Catholic University of Colombia. The work resulted in a total of 31 indicators related to neighborhood informality, 17 impacts on the territory, and 8 pathologies, establishing the intrinsic relationship between informality, poverty, and public health of the inhabitant at the urban level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores power dynamics among stakeholders in the Kejetia/Central Market Redevelopment Project in Kumasi, Ghana. It adopts a case study approach and draws on multiple qualitative data collection methods, including in-depth interviews of 62 representatives of evicted traders and project officials. The study reveals the use of participatory approaches that ignored many informal stakeholders of the project. These stakeholders also adopted varied strategies to engage city authorities with myriads of outcomes. We argue that the major infrastructure development projects in emerging African cities should have built-in mechanisms for identifying and including stakeholders at all stages of their implementation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nPoint Of InterestTaking a Global South perspective, we investigate the influence of informality and socio-cultural norms on the mobility and participation of people with mobility impairments in public activities. Sit-down and go-along interviews, and GPS tracking/plotting were conducted to gather data from 14 participants living in urban neighbourhoods of Tegalrejo, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Thematic analysis and qualitative Geographic Information System (GIS) were used to analyse data. Findings show that mobility barriers and enablers based on the everyday experience of participants are made up of inter-related physical and socio-cultural dimensions. Urban informality generates barriers to mobility, but participants could tactically use aspects of such informality to facilitate their movement. Tegalrejo’s kampung collectivism generates opportunities for mobility and community participation. However, participants are often excluded in the guise of pemakluman. These findings add to existing literature on disability, place, and mobility in urban contexts by providing insights about the influence of neighbourhood conditions in Tegalrejo.This research examines barriers to mobility and community participation of people with mobility impairments in Tegalrejo, an urban neighbourhood in Indonesia.A more collectivist urban village (kampung) way of living in Tegalrejo generates opportunities for mobility and community participation of people with mobility impairments.However, some distinctive socio-cultural norms, such as pemakluman (being explicitly ‘excused’ from participating in communal activities), maintain the exclusion of people with mobility impairments.Urban informality generates barriers to mobility, but some of features of informality can be used tactically by people with mobility impairments to enable their mobility and movement.Findings from this article can challenge and enrich knowledge gained from research primarily focused on high-income countries’ experiences.This research examines barriers to mobility and community participation of people with mobility impairments in Tegalrejo, an urban neighbourhood in Indonesia.A more collectivist urban village (kampung) way of living in Tegalrejo generates opportunities for mobility and community participation of people with mobility impairments.However, some distinctive socio-cultural norms, such as pemakluman (being explicitly ‘excused’ from participating in communal activities), maintain the exclusion of people with mobility impairments.Urban informality generates barriers to mobility, but some of features of informality can be used tactically by people with mobility impairments to enable their mobility and movement.Findings from this article can challenge and enrich knowledge gained from research primarily focused on high-income countries’ experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the gendered ways in which women community leaders in East Jerusalem experience and navigate their urban environment. We draw on the concept of 'gray space' as a way to think through how Palestinian women's everyday lives are shaped by East Jerusalem as a liminal space. Gray space conveys the spectrum that stretches between categories of legality and illegality, formality and informality – either in housing, economy, or polity. While gray space has mostly been used to understand the structural forces that shape cities, we connect the concept to feminist geography scholarship to investigate the quotidian, everyday gendered ways in which Palestinian women negotiate this unique and complex space. Our research demonstrates that far from being passive victims of their oppressive and challenging circumstances, Palestinian women leaders are agents of change in their communities through their development of various everyday strategies and initiatives. Within the patriarchal context of Palestinian society, the agency of women leaders can be partly attributed to the power vacuum in East Jerusalem caused by the occupation, demonstrating that gray space can be both a site of restriction and liberation for Palestinian women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, scholarly attention has shifted within urban informality research from informal settlements to the appropriation of public spaces in formal urban settings. Overflow, a common research subject within this context, has drawn particular interest. This study investigates overflow dynamics in a representative district of Hong Kong, utilizing the overflow rate as a measure of the extent to which overflow occurs. Three‐dimensional (3D) scanning technology was applied to collect spatial data from back alleys. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to identify the spatial characteristics of back alleys that influence overflow rates. The results revealed that back alleys with a flatter spatial interface, more overhead shelter, greater numbers of alley‐shops, and shorter overall length corresponded to a higher number of overflow occurrences. Two novel findings emerged: First, a negative correlation between spatial interface unevenness and overflow rates, and second, differential impacts of the shop density and number of alley‐shops on overflow rates. These findings may serve as a valuable reference for governmental policy formulation regarding overflow management and may offer architects workable insights for designing back alleys and street spaces conducive to public use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article re-examines the historiography of telephony in Bogotá, Colombia, focusing on the semi-public phones known as telemonederos. It challenges the conventional mono-medial and mono-usage narratives of telephony by highlighting the diverse and multifaceted use of phones in the context of urban informality. The research explores how telemonederos emerged as a creative response to Bogotá’s socio-economic and technological dynamics, embodying accessible technology and entrepreneurial spirit. These devices, evolving within electronic bazaars and informal economies, became integral to the city’s communication landscape, influencing the delivery of mobile services. The study also draws parallels between the development of telemonederos and auto-construction practices in urban environments, underscoring the role of community-driven initiatives in the modernisation of Bogotá. This approach offers a nuanced view of Bogotá as a media city, where informal networks and innovations significantly shape its technological and social evolution.

In the 1980s, in parallel to the decline of large-scale planning, a local critique of modernist urbanism came to dominate the planning discourse in Zagreb, one that sought to implement strategies of urban regeneration on the omnipresent strata of persisting agricultural lots, and would soon be inscribed as the guiding ethos in the last socialist general plan. Concentrating their efforts on the central area of Trnje, then littered with scattered zones of informal construction that had hitherto resisted generation after generation of ambitious plans to convert it into a central representative and commercial part of Zagreb, local urban planners gradually formulated an innovative system of urban renewal that would enable its programmatic and morphological integration with the historic city. Breaking with the already exhausted expansionist strategy of large-scale greenfield planning, they strove to direct the future development of the city towards the densification and improvement of urban quality for previously “skipped-over” areas, with a newly found appreciation for the idiosyncrasies and complexities of the existing agricultural morphologies and heterogeneous buildings. The peculiar and deliberate choice of this kind of underlying urban strata as the basis of process-based urban renewal to harness the potential of both commercial and private actors promised a pronouncedly different urban outcome than the tabula rasa approach deployed at the apex of modernist urban planning only a decade earlier. However, the complex gestation process of required executive documents, the failure to create sufficient mechanisms of control, and the subsequent ascension of private ownership as the dominant spatial value all helped to usher in a period of frantic individual construction, signalling an abrupt end of this experiment. Rather than mere manifestations of capitalist transition, these processes will be framed as unintended echoes of the paradigm shift within the plans themselves.

Abstract In recent years, scholarly attention has shifted within urban informality research from informal settlements to the appropriation of public spaces in formal urban settings. Overflow, a common research subject within this context, has drawn particular interest. This study investigates overflow dynamics in a representative district of Hong Kong, utilizing the overflow rate as a measure of the extent to which overflow occurs. Three‐dimensional (3D) scanning technology was applied to collect spatial data from back alleys. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to identify the spatial characteristics of back alleys that influence overflow rates. The results revealed that back alleys with a flatter spatial interface, more overhead shelter, greater numbers of alley‐shops, and shorter overall length corresponded to a higher number of overflow occurrences. Two novel findings emerged: First, a negative correlation between spatial interface unevenness and overflow rates, and second, differential impacts of the shop density and number of alley‐shops on overflow rates. These findings may serve as a valuable reference for governmental policy formulation regarding overflow management and may offer architects workable insights for designing back alleys and street spaces conducive to public use.

Urban (physical) and business informality and economic circularity may come together in cities of the global South. In this paper we explore the intersection of business and urban informality and circular economy outcomes in community-based clusters of informal businesses. These intersections are revealed in the relationship of businesses to the home, the localization of linkages (including the use of recycled materials) and the relationship of businesses to the local communities in which they are embedded. We draw on data from 203 questionnaire survey returns from five kampung -based footwear and clothing industry clusters in the Indonesian city of Bandung. The research confirms the ambiguity of the relationship between individual business dynamics and the communities in which they are embedded. Our findings suggest some points of policy leverage centred on business and community institutions, and lead on to avenues for research that might elaborate the ambiguous relationship between business and social innovation with respect to sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the right to access public spaces and streets is impacted not only because of automobility but also by socio-spatial factors of the urban environment. This paper presents insights towards a holistic understanding for street experiments (with a focus on stationary and slow travel modes) by highlighting the factors that impact the conditions of mobility and access through the lens of gender. By adopting a combination of new technologies, such as GPS, along with mobile methods, like ethnography, this research centres around the everyday travel experiences of urban marginalized women (UMW) from peri‑urban areas of New Delhi who contest their right to access public spaces on a day-to-day basis. This study examines the socio-spatial environment comprising the daily mobilities of UMW to reveal the conditions of mobility and access to public spaces. The findings highlight that the issues faced by these women while travelling, mainly guided by aspects of gender, act as barriers to their mobility and access to public spaces (streets) in urban informal conditions. The study also reveals elements of urban informality (socio-spatial elements) enhance as well as negatively on the daily mobilities of UMW. These socio-spatial factors were found to be interconnected to one another and thus cannot be implemented as individual or isolated factors. The results of the study support the proposal of a more inclusive and accessible public space.

Working at home is a ubiquitous practice across the globe with varying degrees of recognition and visibility subject to the context in which it is undertaken. In the Global South, even as home-based work is a dominant mode of informal urban employment, there is limited recognition and scholarship on the sites where it is undertaken and the inadequacies in which these sites are embedded. This essay seeks to provide a framework to think about the spatiality of the workhomes which are sites where users undertake activities related both to their work and the home. We argue that the particularities of cities in the Global South, which are marked by its spatial and economic informality, have specific implications on workhomes. The framework is provided by examining the spatial, material, tenurial, and infrastructural aspects across three scales - that of the individual workhome, at the sett lement scale, and at the meso-level spatial aggregations in the city. Through this, we present implications for planning and policy making to improve conditions for workhomes and those who use their homes for work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Vietnam's capital city Hanoi, the growing popularity of application based (app‐based) motorbike taxis has offered many inhabitants new opportunities to pursue a mobile livelihood with ride‐hailing platforms. Nonetheless, as this influx of app‐based drivers has hit the city's streets, specific livelihood and mobility frictions have emerged, notably with informal, 'traditional' motorbike taxi drivers, or xe ôm. In this paper we analyse these evolving sites and moments of friction and their impacts on driver livelihoods and mobilities for both driver groups. We draw conceptually on debates regarding mobility, platform economies, and urban livelihoods, while specifically interrogating the concept of friction to highlight three possible analytical applications. Methodologically, we interpret static and ride‐along interviews completed with over 130 drivers. We highlight a range of tactics 'traditional' and app‐based motorbike taxi drivers have employed to respond to rising frictions, defend their 'turf', and maintain their street‐based livelihoods. Driver responses reveal differing access to distinctive forms of social capital and social networks, and contrasting levels of agency regarding their mobilities. By conceptually teasing apart the notion of friction, we wish to expand and deepen understandings of the experiences of vulnerability, precarity, and other impacts of platformisation for different motorbike taxi driver cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban villages in China are the spatial manifestation of urban informality. Previous research has attributed the proliferation of urban villages to a lack of state regulation or the inability of the state. This research seeks to reconsider state regulation of urban villages in light of a new conception of informality resulting from state action. Through a case study of urban transformation in Shenzhen, this research argues that the state is perpetually (re)producing new urban spaces to serve the evolving capital accumulation regime. Such efforts meet resistance when residents' living areas are affected. Resulting from negotiations and compromise between the local authority and affected residents, informality arises during the social creation of space. To support the ever-changing accumulation regime, the state's policies on urban villages constantly evolve, oscillating between tolerance and exclusion. The state defines which activities are formal versus informal, as well as which informality will flourish versus fade into the background of spatial production. Instead of a binary classification, urban village governance should be viewed as an ongoing process that relies on the state's political-economic objectives and the greater urban process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the lived daily experiences of street vendors operating along the Main North 1 Road in the CBD of Maseru, Lesotho. This exploration considers how street vendors access and negotiate a claim for the right to the street. The challenges confronting these vendors in their daily hustling, including COVID-19 restrictions, are also examined. A narrative inquiry research design informs this article with data collected from interviews with purposively selected street vendors from Maseru. This primary data was triangulated with document analysis to increase the validity of the findings. The findings highlight strategies employed by vendors in Maseru that include integrating with the formal enterprises, diversifying their trades, resisting and frustrating certain decisions by the local authorities, and contributing to urban blight. A framework for interrogating and understanding street vending and its nuances is postulated based on the findings from Maseru. The article strongly appeals to the authorities to find more benign ways of integrating street vending into the production of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The habitat production model in capitalist countries in general, and Latin America in particular, is based on the dynamics generated by land consumption. In Colombia, housing maintains a condition of merchandise and functions under the laws of the market even though the 1991 Constitution established it as a right. Given the current quantitative and qualitative deficit, and the imbalance resulting from inequity and the state of poverty of large sectors of the population, urban informality is perpetuated as the only housing alternative. This form of the social construction of the territory not only occurs in cities like Bogotá but is also reproduced in neighboring municipalities. If there is information to characterize the municipalities, it is possible to carry out preventive actions that mitigate the impact of informality; hence the Informality Index, which measures and records the conditions in these municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have seen a rising interest in the peripheral nature of urbanization processes. While research has put the spotlight on large‐scale, transnational and financialized real estate actors, less attention has been paid to informal land developers. Addressing that knowledge gap, this article underscores the key role of land developers in informal urbanization through a case study of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. A mixed‐methods approach provides new evidence of the widespread, variegated and spatially uneven development of irregular and clandestine subdivisions over the last two decades, revealing a heterogeneous landscape of informal developers. The study shows that informal development has been shifting from the typical popular and peripheral subdivision, which provided precarious yet affordable housing for working‐class families, to new forms of speculative investment for the middle and upper classes, such as country homes and gated communities in peri‐urban and rural areas. I argue that this shift is explained by both national and local changing regulatory frameworks and processes of economic restructuring, urban neoliberalism and housing financialization in the periphery. In light of this, I propose the notion of 'property‐led informality' to refer to a regime of informal urbanization increasingly dominated by commodified, rentiership and speculative land dynamics in the sprawling metropolises of the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a case study of Alexandria city, Egypt, this paper investigates the configuration, interrelation, and integration of urban expansion within the framework of sustainability transitions to enhance the performance of sociotechnical transitions. It explores two main arguments; first, to evaluate the recent urban planning innovations, and second, to raise awareness of the participatory planning model to enhance the involvement of the three pillars to better integrate urban sustainable development. It presumes there is a linkage between urban sustainability transitions and the geographical transitions. It further evaluates whether this linkage would benefit accommodating the rapid population growth of Alexandria. This research applies an empirical methodology to test concepts and patterns known from theory generating three scenarios from empirical data. Moving beyond the ‘niche–regime dichotomy’, this study concludes that innovative practices and vested interests are typically constituted in a dualistic manner and tend to incite processes of change in both.

Urban informality is an everyday life phenomenon in Jakarta but has not been extensively discussed, especially in relation to spatial design practice. This is important because formality and informality are not entirely separate but rather interconnected and complementary (Moatasim, 2019). It has also been discovered that on-street informality such as street vending demonstrates the existence and trend of urban space and also acts as the most visible manifestation of the informal economy. Therefore, this research focuses on investigating the integration of urban informality with special attention to its influence on the spatial or architectural aspects. This was achieved through the qualitative method which involves the application of a phenomenological paradigm by participating in the street vending and informal economy on Thamrin 10, Jalan H. Agus Salim, and Jalan Percetakan Negara streets in Jakarta. The results showed that informality is present at different degrees of contemporary urban life and there is a pressing spatial demand for such activities. Moreover, it was discovered that spatial integration of urban informality has the ability to sustain and catalyse greater urban frameworks, including the activities of the formal sector.

Resumen El desarrollo urbano informal ha configurado amplias extensiones de territorio como áreas urbanas consolidadas de las principales ciudades de América Latina. La informalidad urbana ha mitigado el déficit habitacional en la región, convirtiéndose en la única opción de producción habitacional para la población más vulnerable que el mercado inmobiliario formal no logra cubrir. Este articulo invita a entender y reconocer estas formas de construcción social del territorio, mediante una revisión de los modelos teóricos de interpretación de la ciudad informal más reconocidos. Se avanza en el planteamiento de un nuevo modelo teórico de interpretación, derivado de la integración y la convergencia de diferentes factores identificados en los modelos analizados, junto a la contribución del autor, con el deseo de crear una herramienta de caracterización territorial integral para asentamientos informales, que sirva para la creación de planes, programas o proyectos en América Latina. Abstract Informal urban development has shaped large extensions of territory, such as consolidated urban areas, part of the main cities of Latin America. Urban informality has mitigated the housing deficit in the region, becoming the only option that has managed housing production for the most vulnerable population, which the formal real estate market cannot cover. This article invites you to understand and recognize these forms of social construction of the territory, through a review of the most recognized theoretical models of interpretation of the informal city. With the desire to advance in the approach of a new theoretical model of interpretation of the informal city, derived from the integration and convergence of different factors identified in the models analyzed, together with the contribution of the author, to create a comprehensive territorial characterization tool for informal settlements, which serves for the creation of plans, programs or projects in Latin America.

Abstract Incrementalism is a mode of self-help and continuing practice that is prevalent primarily in the Global South. It enables owner-builders to meet housing needs typically over an extended period of time as they can more conveniently manage the required resources. While (informal) tenure, materiality, and housing conditions have long been the focus of incremental housing scholarship, researchers are increasingly recognising the value of incrementalism’s metabolic interplay with broader urban processes. This paper complements these later works by qualitatively examining four dominant incremental housing pathways in the urban fringes of Khulna, Bangladesh: absentee landholding, makeshift sheltering, speculative land disposal and informal brokerage. Empirical evidence suggests that a variety of actors, primarily motivated by land speculation, participate in these incremental housing pathways. While the implementation of the official plan for Khulna’s peri-urban areas is delayed, I argue that these actors coproduce a complex housing market as well as a self-help city in which urban institutions play more passive and reactionary roles. The findings contribute to rethinking the self-organising logic of urban expansion in many Southern cities, which is often centred on urban land at the crossroads of institutional capacity deficit, speculative housing demand and supply, and informal-formal hybridity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-situ upgrading of informal settlements has emerged as a key planning policy to provide durable housing that respects human rights and is financially viable. Slum upgrading policies usually focus on tenure legalisation and infrastructure improvements. However, we argue that such interventions miss a significant aspect by which informal settlements can be prevented from developing slum conditions – the application of building regulation. In conventional upgrading approaches, the application of building regulation has been conceived as a singular approach, in which city-wide, state-initiated building codes are adapted to the settlement. We broaden the debate on regulating informal settlement by incorporating regulation 'from within', which acknowledges that informal settlements are formed by sociospatial logics which are amenable to regulation by the dwellers themselves. This viewpoint discusses why urban regulation is needed in informal settlement upgrading, presents two of the broad critiques on the application of planning regulation to informal settlement, and suggests three approaches to regulating, namely 'lowering standards', 'relational rules', and 'neighbourly consent'. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transport workers have largely been placed outside the radar of critical urban studies, although they are at the core of urban mobility. By adopting a co-production perspective and asking 'who owns the motor tricycle taxis in Wa, Ghana', this paper explores owner-operator relationships in the tricycle taxi industry. We posit that rather than being actuated by workers in the informal economy, the industry is co-produced by practices of state-sanctioned institutions, street-level bureaucrats and actors linked to power and wealth. The varied actor constellations and resultant contractual arrangements greatly shape how motor tricycle taxis operate; their mobility offers and regulatory challenges in Ghana. Therefore, we propose an urban research agenda that mainstreams urban transport workers into critical urban studies and call for an open discourse to interrogate the problematisation of motor tricycle taxis in urban transport policy and planning in sub-Saharan African cities. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon previous debates surrounding the English-language term slum, this article argues that slum stigmatizes the spaces and subjects that it refers to not only because it evokes nineteenth-century imaginaries of pauperism and crime but also for the sweeping gesture that it implies; for its refusal to observe in depth the experience of those who inhabit the spaces at stake and the interests associated. Intended as a universal term, "slum" can refer to such disparate urban typologies as inner-city high-rise tenements, low-rise overcrowded housing, and peripheral shantytowns, which empties it of specific meaning and converts it into an abstract container on to which external agendas are projected. To further demonstrate this point, the article reads slum alongside the seemingly analogous yet more specific Argentine and Peruvian terms villas miseria, barriadas and pueblos jóvenes, fields of dispute whose meanings have been contested by different actors, including residents, from the outset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]