The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization

The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization investigates the mutual relationship between the struggle for political inclusion and processes of informal urbanization in different socio-political and cultural settings.

It seeks a middle ground between two opposing perspectives on the political meaning of urban informality. The first, the ‘emancipatory perspective’, frames urban informality as a practice that fosters autonomy, entrepreneurship and social mobility. The other perspective, more critical, sees informality predominantly as a result of political exclusion, inequality, and poverty. Do we see urban informality as a fertile breeding ground for bottom-up democracy and more political participation? Or is urban informality indeed merely the result of a democratic deficit caused by governing autocratic elites and ineffective bureaucracies?

This book displays a wide variety of political practices and narratives around these positions based on narratives conceived upon specific case cities. It investigates how processes of urbanization are politicized in countries in the Global South and in transition economies.

The handbook explores 24 cities in the Global South, as well as examples from Eastern Europe and East Asia, with contributions written by a global group of scholars familiar with the cases (often local scholars working in the cities analyzed) who offer unique insight on how informal urbanization can be interpreted in different contexts. These contributions engage the extreme urban environments under scrutiny which are likely to be the new laboratories of 21st-century democracy. It is vital reading for scholars, practitioners, and activists engaged in informal urbanization.

Roberto Rocco is a senior Assistant Professor in the Department of Urbanism of the Delft University of Technology. He has got a degree in Architecture and Planning from the University of São Paulo and a post-graduate MSc degree in Spatial Planning from the same university. He worked as an independent researcher for NGOs in Brazil before being awarded a PhD by TU Delft in 2008, with a thesis on ‘new urban geographies of globalization’. He has published on issues of governance, sustainability, and spatial justice and currently focuses on challenges of urbanization in the Global South and the implementation and governance of the New Urban Agenda.

Jan van Ballegooijen is an independent researcher and practicing architect. He received an MSc degree at Delft University of Technology in 2011, with a project focusing on the relationships between democratization and urban informality in São Paulo’s periphery. At TU Delft, he has also worked as a research assistant for the chair ‘Design as Politics’, investigating the tensions between politics and urban design. Besides his current work as an independent researcher, he is also a practicing architect in the Netherlands and Belgium. He is currently expanding his research on the relationship between urban informality and democracy.