Informal Cities

"Over a quarter of the world's urban population lives in informal settlements. While informality as a concept has been widely debated, it is still in need of a definitive account, which is what this agenda-setting coedited volume sets out to provide. Arguing that informality was vital to urban development across the globe, the editors and contributors reveal informality as an intrinsic feature of urbanity, capable of illuminating processes of state formation, socioeconomic stratification, and political struggle. The volume brings together cases from Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, and Mexico), Northern Africa (Morocco and Algiers), and Latin Europe (France, Spain, and Italy) to dispel the notion that urban informality exists only in the Global South. Topics range from attempts to legitimize informal settlements to grassroots efforts to build and save them and the role of racial and ethnic discrimination in their governance. Informal Cities is an indispensable guide to the complex and fraught terrain of urban informality in its many guises"--

Charlotte Vorms is associate professor of history at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University where she is also a member of the Center for the Social History of Contemporary Worlds. She is the author or coeditor of several books, including La forja del extrarradio and What's in a Name?Brodwyn Fischer is professor of Latin American history at the University of Chicago, where she also directs the Global Studies Program. She is the author or coeditor of several books, including A Poverty of Rights and Cities from Scratch.