The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanisation

The political meaning of informal urbanisation

Informal settlements are often presented as technical problems requiring better housing, infrastructure or land administration. The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanisation, edited by Roberto Rocco and Jan van Ballegooijen and published by Routledge in 2019, starts from a different premise: informal urbanisation is fundamentally political. It is through struggles over land, citizenship, recognition and rights that millions of urban residents negotiate their place in the city. Understanding informal urbanisation therefore requires understanding the institutions, conflicts and aspirations that shape urban development.

The book is available from Routledge HERE.

The Handbook brings together 25 chapters covering 24 cities and regions across Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Rather than proposing a single theory of urban informality, it assembles diverse disciplinary and geographical perspectives that reveal both the common political dynamics and the profound contextual differences shaping informal urbanisation. Together, these contributions demonstrate that informality is not merely a legal or technical condition, but a lens through which to understand state formation, democratic inclusion, governance and the production of urban space.

The volume also contributes to a broader shift in urban theory by taking experiences from the Global South seriously as sources of knowledge rather than simply as cases to which theories developed elsewhere are applied. The cities discussed throughout the book challenge conventional planning narratives and show how practices of self-organisation, negotiation and political struggle can reshape both urban space and the institutions that govern it.

Explore the Atlas: 25 chapters, 24 cities

Each card below corresponds to one chapter of the Handbook. Open a card to see who wrote it and what that city teaches us about the politics of informal urbanisation. Use the filters to follow a single analytical thread across several cities at once, or scroll down to the reading clusters for ready-made comparisons.

For teachers and students: the filters group chapters by shared analytical theme rather than by region, so a single search can put Ankara, Lima and Seoul, three very different political systems, in front of a reader at once. The reading clusters below do some of that comparative work already, each pairing two or three chapters around one question.

Reading clusters for seminars

Each cluster below puts two or three chapters in conversation around a single question. They are starting points for discussion, not conclusions: every cluster names a genuine point of contestation rather than settling it.

When does the state produce informality, rather than merely tolerate it? Ahmedabad · Jerusalem · Harare

Guiding question

Is there a meaningful difference between informality a state tolerates and informality a state manufactures? Ahmedabad’s ghettoisation of Juhapura proceeds through ordinary regulatory tools rather than open exclusion; Jerusalem’s informal Palestinian housing is, on Chiodelli’s account, a by-product of deliberate Israeli territorial strategy; Harare’s land allocation becomes a direct instrument of inter-party electoral competition. In each case informality is not the absence of state capacity but a particular use of it, though the politics it serves, nationalist, territorial, electoral, are not the same.

Do clientelist bargains ever become durable rights? Ankara · Lima · Seoul

Guiding question

Ankara’s gecekondu dwellers won repeated amnesties and titling waves but stayed tied to the next electoral cycle; Lima’s pueblos jóvenes gained rights-bearing status through a 1971 pact with Velasco’s military government, only to see neoliberal adjustment and renewed clientelism erode those gains; Seoul’s informal settlers moved from uprising to systemic claim-making to electoral leverage across three different regimes, yet each gain proved short-lived. Read together, the three chapters suggest that a bargain struck with a particular regime rarely survives that regime’s exit.

What is gained, and what is foreclosed, by choosing quiet tactics over open contestation? Hanoi · Khartoum · São Paulo (Cortiços)

Guiding question

Hanoi’s residents practise what Geertman and Kim, following Bayat and Scott, call soft politics and hidden transcripts; Khartoum’s displaced populations resist through the simple fact of remaining visible in a city designed to exclude them; São Paulo’s cortiços survive by staying invisible behind formal façades altogether. Each strategy avoids the risks of confrontation, but each also leaves residents dependent on a tolerance that could, in principle, be withdrawn.

When residents or the state build infrastructure, whose authority does it ultimately serve? Medellín · Johannesburg · Cairo

Guiding question

Medellín’s Encircled Garden Project shows the Colombian state using monumentalised transit infrastructure to reassert territorial control over Comuna 8; Johannesburg’s Kya Sands residents build their own water and electricity infrastructure precisely because the state will not; Cairo’s Ard al-Liwa residents reclaim public space after 2011 with the state’s authority temporarily weakened. Infrastructure, in other words, is rarely a neutral public good: who builds it, and under what conditions, is itself a political question.

What changes when occupation is framed as a constitutional claim rather than a survival strategy? Belo Horizonte · Fortaleza · São Paulo (Occupations)

Guiding question

All three Brazilian cases describe occupations that invoke the constitutional right to adequate housing rather than simple economic necessity. Belo Horizonte’s post-2000 occupations are explicit legal claims; Fortaleza’s Trilha do Senhor residents used inclusionary urban policy to win standing, later facing eviction pressure from land recommodification; São Paulo’s Ocupação Marconi shows occupiers negotiating selectively with both state and market, a pragmatism that risks letting absentee building owners benefit from state buyouts intended for occupiers. Rights-based framing strengthens a claim, but does not insulate it from contestation.

How do gender and religious structures shape who can make a claim on informal space? Yogyakarta · Mashhad · Beirut

Guiding question

Yogyakarta’s Kalijawi network is led by women who reorder a male-dominated public sphere through organisation and visibility; Mashhad’s right-to-the-city claims are inseparable from Shia religious faith and Iran’s Sharia-inflected institutions; Beirut’s Dahiye is shaped by a confessional citizenship inherited from Ottoman and Mandate-era power-sharing. None of these chapters treats informal urbanisation as a purely economic phenomenon: who can claim space, and how, is also a question of gender and religious order.

CLICK HERE TO EXPLORE THE COMPLETE BOOK PROJECT.

Across much of the Global South, millions of urban residents remain excluded from formal systems of land ownership, housing, infrastructure and political representation. These processes of exclusion leave visible marks on the built environment, particularly through the emergence of informal settlements. Yet informal urbanisation is not simply a symptom of institutional failure. It is also a political process through which people claim space, negotiate rights, build collective agency and seek recognition within the institutions that govern the city.

The Handbook therefore seeks to bridge two influential perspectives on urban informality. One interprets informality primarily as the outcome of exclusion, inequality and weak institutions. The other emphasises its emancipatory potential, highlighting forms of self-organisation, collective action and political mobilisation. Rather than choosing between these perspectives, the book demonstrates that both coexist, often within the same city. Informality can simultaneously reproduce vulnerability and create opportunities for citizenship, democratic participation and institutional transformation.

This project marked an important turning point in my own research. The questions explored throughout the Handbook—citizenship, political inclusion, governance and the production of urban space—subsequently evolved into a broader research agenda on spatial justice. My current work on democratic planning, public goods and just urban transitions builds directly on many of the debates first articulated in this volume, particularly through initiatives such as the Centre for the Just City, the Horizon Europe project UP2030 and international policy work with organisations including the Union for the Mediterranean.

The Handbook brought together an international community of scholars, practitioners and doctoral researchers working across planning, geography, architecture, development studies and political science. Since its publication, it has become a widely used reference in teaching and research on informal urbanisation, planning, governance and spatial justice, helping consolidate an international conversation on the political dimensions of urban informality.

For further information about the book, its contributors and the wider research project, please visit the project website.

The neighbourhood of Cabuçu in São Paulo, Brazil, developed largely outside the prevailing legal planning framework. — The neighbourhood of Cabuçu in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, was built outside of legal planning frameworks.

For a collection of photographs documenting informal urbanisation around the world, please visit HERE.