Understanding informality as a [socially] produced space.

This paper reframes urban informality as a socially produced space. With this framework, I analyze and discuss informality and its policy implications in Mexican cities. I argue that through regularization policy, the main strategy to approach informality in Mexico, the informal space has been partitioned. Placing regularization at the center of governmental strategies addressing urban informality constrains informality to its legal definition. Conversely, understanding informality as a way of life, as a place of political and economical interaction, as a framework of social experience and symbolic representations and as a space containing all these dimensions, may help in drawing a clearer picture of the informal space and in turn better inform the policy to tackle it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]