Urban Informalities

Reflections on the Formal and Informal

Michael Waibel, Colin McFarlane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317003755
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Bringing together an interdisciplinary and international group of researchers working on a wide variety of cities throughout Asia, Latin America and Europe, this book addresses, rethinks and, in some cases, abandons the notions of formal and informal urbanism. This collection critically interrogates both the ways in which 'informal' and 'formal' are put to work in the governing and politicisation of cities, and their conceptual strengths and weaknesses. It does so by focusing on a wide variety of topics, from specific forms of housing and labour often traditionally linked to the formal/informal divide, to urban political negotiations, cultural practices, and ways of being in the city. The book takes stock of and reflects on how contemporary urban informality/formality relations are being produced and are/might be understood, and puts forward an enlarged and comprehensive understanding of urban informality.

Chapter 1
Juggling with Formality and Informality in Housing: Some Lessons from the New South Africa

Astrid Ley

Introduction

The issue of governance when applied to housing requires an alternative look at the informality of many urban poor communities. Beyond the physical or unauthorised status of these settlements, one must recognise an informal ‘steering’ logic behind them. This chapter proposes a differentiation of the formal-informal continuum in housing, with regard to the exclusive or inclusive patterns of governance that are created. While much research and many strategies focus on the inclusiveness of institutionalised participation, it is important to ask how the minority formal sector can be included in a housing process that is primarily self-organised and produced outside of regulations. Against this background, a window of opportunity opens up for informal spaces of governance that are created by organised slum dwellers. These spaces function as an instrument of housing development that juggles the formal-informal divide.

Housing: Subject to Negotiation

In international development discourse, the challenge of urbanisation is linked to the need for shelter (UN-Habitat 2003, 2004; Hall and Pfeiffer 2000). Numerous cities, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa, experience a “jobless urban growth” (Jenkins, Smith and Wang 2007: 299; Rakodi 1997). As a result, a large share of the urban population is increasingly confined to inadequate living conditions.¹

Approaches in housing and planning for the urban poor living in slums or informal settlements shifted according to the dominant international development thinking at the time. Since the 1970s, following an era of slum clearance and mass public housing provisions, housing has come to be seen as a social process, rather than as a product (Turner and Fichter 1972; Turner 1976; Abrams 1966). Therefore, strategies moved away from simply restraining the physical deterioration of settlements towards strengthening the self-organising potential of communities (Gilbert 2007; Smith 2002; Hamdi 1991; The World Bank 1991: 9).

Consequently, during the last couple of decades, the understanding of ‘the state’ has shifted from that of a provider of housing to, rather, an enabler and partner in the low-cost housing system (Jenkins and Smith 2001; Pugh 1995). It is paralleled by an urban management approach promoted by international development agencies. This approach links housing to the normative agenda of ‘good governance’. Partnerships were supposed to be provided by the state and to rely on the involvement of non-state actors (UN 1996; UN-Habitat 2001: 211). Thus, housing issues become increasingly handled as matters of governance.

‘Good governance’ as a development strategy, however, is a misleading concept which blurs the impact of different actors and power relations. First of all, it idealises partnerships as strong relationships between distinct sectors. In reality, these relationships are far more complex and heterogeneous (Majale 2005: 3). From a collaborative planning perspective, this would call for a reflective planner who is aware of the different power relations and who fosters community empowerment. Secondly, from a critical planning perspective, governance per se cannot be normatively good: Foucault’s key argument on auto-governmentality² asserts that actors constantly reproduce power relations, also in participatory processes. Instead, critical planning theory applies frameworks to understand the underlying processes of social control that shape cities (Yiftachel 1998; Flyvbjerg 1998). Thirdly, as an alternative to the perspective of planning as social control, new institutionalism assumes that actors are interdependent: an outcome is produced by multiple actors with different interests, perceptions and capabilities (Scharpf 1997: 11). Institutionalism is therefore interested in interagency relationships as modes of governance. Against this background DiGaetano and Strom arrive at a categorisation of clientelistic (pragmatic, personalised, exchange relationship), corporatist (consensus-oriented, exclusionary, ruling coalitions), managerial (formal and bureaucratic relations), pluralist (bargaining, competing interests) and populist (inclusion and participation of grassroots) modes of governance (DiGaetano and Strom 2003: 367).

To understand the processes at work in housing and planning, one should take a theoretical perspective outside the planning field itself. The analytical framework on governance applied here is interested in revealing the underlying social and political processes. It assumes that housing, much like the city itself, is constantly subject to negotiation. Here a sociological perspective that understands governance as a matter of processes and institutions becomes important. Governance is then defined as a ‘steering’ logic in society with a mix of actors involved in a process of no clear hierarchy (Sehested 2001: 11.; Pierre 1999; DiGaetano and Strom 2003).

Informality: The Emancipatory Potential of ‘Knowing how Cities are Lived’

A further critique questions the relevance of Western normative planning ideals in the context of the contentious and complex reality of inequality, informality and ‘everyday life’ in the cities of the Global South³ (Watson 2003). Here, slums are the most visible physical segregation in a world which is increasingly characterised by a growing divide between rich and poor (Le Monde diplomatique 2007: 53). In the case of slums, it is not only the type of shelter that is outside of regulations, but also the organisation of the housing process itself. Informality occurs in terms of land occupation, layout of sites, shelter construction and infrastructure provisions. This points to a provocative question raised by Goethert: “Perhaps it is us, the minority formal sector of development planners that are the excluded and irrelevant?” (Goethert 2005: 18).

These categories of informality are not limited to poverty or slums. In fact, affluent residents also develop sites outside existing regulations. Moreover, numerous informal settlements have evolved as middle class communities, hardly distinguishable from official developments. But informal settlements are the most prevalent of accessible housing options for the urban poor. In this sense they are a means of survival. Since these settlements are hardly found on any official maps, their invisible status in combination with the limited resources available result in overcrowding, a lack of adequate service and poor structural quality of shelter.

But informality is not limited to a means of survival. Informal settlements evolve from and primarily function through an extended and diverse informal sector. This informality, according to AlSayyad and Roy (2004), is presently an organising urban logic. Beyond land and shelter, it is transport, supply of basic services and employment which are organised and provided informally. Moreover, the urban poor rely on informal access to finance, ranging from small-scale saving schemes to profit-making money lenders, as well as on informal systems of support, such as community networks, patrons, brokers and mediators.

But informal settlements can only occur where governments tend to turn a blind eye to them. In other words, it is the lack of enforcement of regulations that creates informality in the first place. Kanbur (2009) therefore specifically calls for research interested in the nature and intensity of non-enforcement. With regards to informal settlements, non-enforcement can be a result of limited administrative capacity, scarce financial resources, lack of alternative sites for relocation or the widespread practice of using the urban poor as vote banks.

Innes et al. (2007) go even a step further: they argue that informality is a feature of planning, a process which is both casual and spontaneous. Roy instead outlines the structural nature of informality as a strategy of planning (Roy 2009: 82). Informality, then, is not unregulated, outside of planning or the result of an absent state, but rather its logic is an idiom of planning itself. It is implemented on purpose in planning in terms of deregulation:

By informality I mean a state of deregulation, one where the ownership, use, and purpose of land cannot be fixed and mapped according to any prescribed set of regulations or the law. Indeed, here the law itself is rendered open-ended and subject to multiple interpretations and interests, the ‘law as a social process’ is a idiosyncratic and arbitrary as that which is illegal […]. (Roy 2009: 80; citing: Berry 1993 and Holston 2007).

Roy puts forward four propositions about informality (Roy 2009: 82):

1. Informality is not synonymous with poverty.

2. Informality is a deregulated rather than unregulated system.

3. The state is an informalised entity, or informality from above.

4. Insurgence does not necessarily create a just city.

This understanding reveals the dualism of formality/informality as an impractical means to explain the continuum at work in planning and housing processes. Moreover, in this context, informality is a matter of negotiation which is expressed in the “ever-shifting relationship between what is legal and illegal, legitimate and illegitimate, authorised and unauthorised” (Roy 2009: 80).

This chapter agrees with the understanding of informality as a convergence of legality and extra-legality in the same process and with the central assumption that “planning is not an antidote to informality” (Roy 2009: 84). However, Roy stresses the intentional mode of informality by the state, whereas in the context of fragile states informality “is likely to be an outcome of regulatory activities of non-statutory institutions” (Kreibich in this volume).

Furthermore, this chapter opposes the view that squatters perpetuate the system of deregulation (‘neoliberalism from below’, Altvater 2005: 14) and that no ‘governance from below’ can occur outside structural conditions (Roy 2009: 85). If this were the case, informality would be confined to be the other side of the same coin, following a logic of action according to global market forces. This chapter argues that there is indeed a globalisation from below that is capable of social regulation in the housing process and, moreover, of reframing the system of governance itself. The techniques to do so derive from rearticulating urban social formations. The analytical perspective then is focused on understanding overall urban social arrangements, or “knowing how cities are lived” (Simone 2002: 294). This forms part of what McFarlane in this volume refers to as “urban tactical learning”.

This knowledge of how cities are lived entails learning how to move in multiple scales of governance and creating them informally vis-à-vis the state.⁴ Sassen raises the point that globalisation and information and communication technology (ICT) expand the geography of civil society actors to transcend locality/proximity. Cities open themselves up to crossborder struggles by the ‘unauthorised’ beyond the formal and state-centred political system (Sassen 2004: 651).

Altvater claims that informality brings about alternative forms of economic and social cooperation. The dysfunction of the state’s steering capacity results in an increased relevance of informal mechanisms. Thus it is not only the physical shelter which continues and extends beyond the formal state frameworks, but it is also the steering logic itself which becomes informal. This emerges as a new form of self-organisation in society. For Altvater there is a choice, and here he differs from the structuralist point of view. According to him, the individualised economy “is a way of conceiving the world (Weltanschauung) [...]. So it is not only a response to need [...] it is also a choice” (Altvater 2005: 16).

Altvater rightly points out the emancipatory potential of informal self-organisation. However, it seems to be enacted as a result of government initiative to instrumentalise or support these new forms as a new logic. But the emancipatory potential goes even further. It creates opportunities for the formal to become included in an alternative logic of action. Goethert envisages a change of participation that does not try to integrate the informal into the formal framework, but rather assumes a convergence towards the informal (Goethert 2005: 18–21).

The concept of exclusion and inclusion is central to understanding the complexity and particularity of this formal-informal continuum (Herrle and Walther 2005: 2). It allows a positioning of actors in governance spaces⁵ and exemplifies the possible ways of understanding (in-)formality. There are four ideal combinations, which will be made explicit using the housing process in South Africa as a case in point.

Four Ways of Juggling (In-)Formal Housing Practice in the New South Africa

South Africa is still trying to come to terms with its apartheid legacy: racially based legislation formed part of the urban exclusion strategy and caused unequal land distribution and tenure insecurity for non-white people.⁶ In the 1960s/70s, state subsidised housing in ‘black’ communities was banned, as cities were considered exclusively for the ‘white’ population. The subsequent illegal infiltration of black Africans led to an increased housing backlog. In 1994, as democracy came into being, the new government had to tackle the massive backlog in housing and service provision. The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the South African Constitution became based upon a strong commitment to housing as a basic human right and the delivery thereof as a responsibility of government itself. National government introduced a housing program and started a mass delivery of housing. But it did not meet the backlog. Instead, informal settlements and the numbers of inadequately housed people have been gr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Informal-formal Divide in Context
• 1 Juggling with Formality and Informality in Housing: Some Lessons from the New South Africa
• 2 Urban Informality Reconsidered in a Neoliberal Context: Gecekondu, Identity, Poverty and Islamic Philanthropism in Turkey
• 3 ‘Informal Moral Economies’ and Urban Governance in India
• 4 Bajji on the Beach: Middle-Class Food Practices in Chennai’s New Beach
• 5 Informality as a Strategy: Street Traders in Hanoi Facing Constant Insecurity
• 6 Informality as Borrowed Security: Contested Food Markets in Dhaka, Bangladesh
• 7 Hip-hop and Sociality in a Brazilian Favela
• 8 The Mode of Informal Urbanisation: Reconciling Social and Statutory Regulation in Urban Land Management
• 9 Conceptualising Informality: Some Thoughts on the Way towards Generalisation
• Index