Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe

Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe brings together historians, anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, urban planners and political activists to break new ground in the globalisation of knowledge about informal housing. Providing both methodological reflections and practical examples, they compare informal settlements, unauthorised occupation of flats, illegal housing construction and political squatting in different regions of the world. Subjects covered include squatter settlements in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, squatting activism in Brazil and Spain, right-wing squatting in Germany, planning laws and informality across countries in the Global North, and squatting in post-Second World War UK and Australia.

The volume’s global approach is found not only in the variety of topics but in the origins of its authors, who between them contribute specialist knowledge from Africa, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, North and South America, and Eastern and Western Europe. Bringing together such a wide range of authors and subjects demonstrates the power of comparative research to open up new perspectives. By comparing, for example, toleration of informal housing in Hong Kong and Paris, squatting in the Netherlands and communist East Germany, or slums in nineteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century Africa, the chapters connect different contexts in path-breaking fashion.

Praise for Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe

'The various contributions on cities in Western, Eastern and Southern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, South America, Africa and Australia impressively show the worldwide spread of the supposedly peripheral phenomenon of informal living ...The anthology offers a well-founded starting point for further analyses of informal living as a process and result of global urbanisation.'
Soziopolis

‘[Brings] major contributions ... to the debate around housing informality.'
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe breaks new ground in the globalisation of knowledge about informal housing.

Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe brings together historians, anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, urban planners and political activists to break new ground in the globalisation of knowledge about informal housing. Providing both methodological reflections and practical examples, they compare informal settlements, unauthorised occupation of flats, illegal housing construction and political squatting in different regions of the world. Subjects covered include squatter settlements in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, squatting activism in Brazil and Spain, planning laws and informality across countries in the Global North, and squatting in post-Second World War UK and Australia.

The volume’s global approach is found not only in the variety of topics but in the origins of its authors, who between them contribute specialist knowledge from Africa, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, North and South America, and Eastern and Western Europe. Bringing together such a wide range of authors and subjects demonstrates the power of comparative research to open up new perspectives. By comparing, for example, toleration of informal housing in Hong Kong and Paris, squatting in the Netherlands and communist East Germany, or slums in nineteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century Africa, the chapters connect different contexts in path-breaking fashion.

Praise for Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe

'The various contributions on cities in Western, Eastern and Southern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, South America, Africa and Australia impressively show the worldwide spread of the supposedly peripheral phenomenon of informal living ...The anthology offers a well-founded starting point for further analyses of informal living as a process and result of global urbanisation.'
Soziopolis
‘[Brings] major contributions ... to the debate around housing informality.'
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

Preface

Alena Ledeneva and Peter Zusi

1. Towards critique and differentiation – Comparative research on informal housing

Udo Grashoff, Fengzhuo Yang

2. Illegal housing: The case for comparison

Alan Gilbert

3. Towards a political economy of toleration of illegality: Comparing tolerated squatting in Hong Kong and Paris

Thomas Aguilera, Alan Smart

4. Squatting in Leiden and Leipzig in the 1970s and 1980s: A comparison of informal housing practices in a capitalist democracy and a communist dictatorship

Udo Grashoff, Charlotte van Rooden, Merel Snoep, Bart van der Steen

5. Squatters and the socialist heritage: A comparison of squatter settlements in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan

Eliza Isabaeva

6. Squatting activism in Brazil and Spain: Articulations between the right to housing and the right to the city

Clarissa Campos, Miguel A. Martinez

7. Favela vs asphalt: Suggesting a new lens on Rio de Janeiro's favelas and formal city

Theresa Williamson

8. Between informal and illegal in the Global North: Planning, law, enforcement and justifiable noncompliance

Rachelle Alterman, Inês Calor

9. Shanty settlements in nineteenth-century Europe: Lessons from comparison with Africa

Olumuyiwa Bayode Adegun

10. Squats across the Empire: A comparison of squatting movements in post-Second World War UK and Australia

Ian McIntyre

11. Failed takeover: The phenomenon of right-wing squatting

Jakob Warnecke

12. Concluding remarks

Udo Grashoff

Bibliography

Index