Article 1: Roy – Urban informality: toward an epistemology of planning
The study of cities is marked by a paradox: much of the urban growth in the 21th century is taking
place in the developing world, but many of the theories of how cities function are about the
developed world. Urban studies are constituted through a duality: global cities versus megacities.
Global cities are first world command nodes of capitalism, while megacities (located in Third World)
are big but not powerful. We have to move beyond the First World ‘models’ and Third World
‘problems’. This can be done by policy approaches that try to learn from the Third World Cities. In
this article she does this by discussing one key theme: urban informality and policy responses to
informality such as slum upgrading and land titling. Three challenges:
1. How planning modalities can produce the unplannable: informality as exception from the formal
order of urbanization
2. How these exceptions can be strategically used by planners to mitigate vulnerabilities of the poor.
3. How dealing with informality requires recognizing the ‘right to the city’: claims that do not fit
neatly into the ownership model of property.
This is also relevant in non-Third World countries which are concerned with distributing justice.
Conceptual framework
Two contrasting frames dominate discussion of informality:
1. Crisis: Hall & Pfeiffer (World Commission) who pay attention to informal hypergrowth cities, which
are exploding. Not only in developing world but also in developed world by migration. It’s bad.
2. Heroism: De Soto sees informality as heroic entrepreneurship. Informal economy is the people’s
response to the state’s incapacity to satisfy the needs of the poor people. If it becomes legalized,
prosperity will flow to all people.
Are contradicting, but also similar. Both view informality as fundamentally separate from formality.
Both frameworks have problematic propositions. First is that informality is equal to poverty. Neither
frame recognizes how informality might be a differentiated process embodying varying degrees of
power and exclusion. Second, both frames conceptualize informality and poverty as being caused by
isolation from global capitalism, however slum dwellers sometimes manufacture products for global
markets. Third, within such frame it becomes possible to see poverty as their own responsibility.
They enhance enablement (making poor help themselves) and obscures the role of the state as
unnecessary. Roy thinks that informality must be rejected and that it must be seen as a mode of
urbanisation. It’s a system of norms that governs the process of urban transformation itself. It
connects different economies and spaces to each other.
Informality as a mode of metropolitan urbanization
Informal housing is a type of market where there is absence of formal planning and regulation. Not
just domain for poor, but also important for middle class and elite. Legal homeownership but in
violation of land use regulation. The site of new informality is the rural/urban interface. Metropolitan
expansion driven by informal settlements. But at the same time, metropolitan fringes are also a key
location for the informal housing practices of the elite: gated communities. However, they enjoy
infrastructure and security of tenure by the state. Metropolitan informal urbanization is made
possible through the particular regulatory of agricultural land that exist at the rural/urban interface
of many Third World cities: produced by the state itself (unmapped land): state of exception.
Sovereignty is the power to determine the state of exception. Informality can be seen as the
expression of such sovereignty. Legalization of informal property is not simply a bureaucratic or
The study of cities is marked by a paradox: much of the urban growth in the 21th century is taking
place in the developing world, but many of the theories of how cities function are about the
developed world. Urban studies are constituted through a duality: global cities versus megacities.
Global cities are first world command nodes of capitalism, while megacities (located in Third World)
are big but not powerful. We have to move beyond the First World ‘models’ and Third World
‘problems’. This can be done by policy approaches that try to learn from the Third World Cities. In
this article she does this by discussing one key theme: urban informality and policy responses to
informality such as slum upgrading and land titling. Three challenges:
1. How planning modalities can produce the unplannable: informality as exception from the formal
order of urbanization
2. How these exceptions can be strategically used by planners to mitigate vulnerabilities of the poor.
3. How dealing with informality requires recognizing the ‘right to the city’: claims that do not fit
neatly into the ownership model of property.
This is also relevant in non-Third World countries which are concerned with distributing justice.
Conceptual framework
Two contrasting frames dominate discussion of informality:
1. Crisis: Hall & Pfeiffer (World Commission) who pay attention to informal hypergrowth cities, which
are exploding. Not only in developing world but also in developed world by migration. It’s bad.
2. Heroism: De Soto sees informality as heroic entrepreneurship. Informal economy is the people’s
response to the state’s incapacity to satisfy the needs of the poor people. If it becomes legalized,
prosperity will flow to all people.
Are contradicting, but also similar. Both view informality as fundamentally separate from formality.
Both frameworks have problematic propositions. First is that informality is equal to poverty. Neither
frame recognizes how informality might be a differentiated process embodying varying degrees of
power and exclusion. Second, both frames conceptualize informality and poverty as being caused by
isolation from global capitalism, however slum dwellers sometimes manufacture products for global
markets. Third, within such frame it becomes possible to see poverty as their own responsibility.
They enhance enablement (making poor help themselves) and obscures the role of the state as
unnecessary. Roy thinks that informality must be rejected and that it must be seen as a mode of
urbanisation. It’s a system of norms that governs the process of urban transformation itself. It
connects different economies and spaces to each other.
Informality as a mode of metropolitan urbanization
Informal housing is a type of market where there is absence of formal planning and regulation. Not
just domain for poor, but also important for middle class and elite. Legal homeownership but in
violation of land use regulation. The site of new informality is the rural/urban interface. Metropolitan
expansion driven by informal settlements. But at the same time, metropolitan fringes are also a key
location for the informal housing practices of the elite: gated communities. However, they enjoy
infrastructure and security of tenure by the state. Metropolitan informal urbanization is made
possible through the particular regulatory of agricultural land that exist at the rural/urban interface
of many Third World cities: produced by the state itself (unmapped land): state of exception.
Sovereignty is the power to determine the state of exception. Informality can be seen as the
expression of such sovereignty. Legalization of informal property is not simply a bureaucratic or
