Informal Settlements of the Global South

This book challenges current ways of thinking about the governance of human settling,mobility, and placemaking by bringing together case studies from around the world. It questions the validity of the conventional divisions of the Global North and Global South and explores the sentiments, resourcefulness, and agency of those positioned by the powerful within these dichotomies. The studies reveal the untold stories of adaptation, negotiation, and contestation by people and their communities, taking the North-South debate in new directions and opening up fresh areas of enquiry for researchers and students in architecture, planning, politics, sociology, and the built environment.

Format: Hardback
Length: 328 pages
Publication date: 01 June 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book brings together a diverse range of case studies from across the globe, including the US-Mexico borderlands, the Calais encampment in France, refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda, and Bangladesh, and contested 'informal enclaves and communities in cities like India, China, Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa. By challenging current ways of thinking about the governance of human settling, mobility, and placemaking, the book offers a fresh perspective on these complex issues.

The 15 essays in the book question the validity of conventional divisions such as the Global North versus the Global South and 'formal versus 'informal' in terms of geographic presence, transborder performances, and the ideological interdependence of Northern and Southern spaces, spatial practices, and authoritative enforcements. The authors, who come from various parts of the world, use 'Global South' as a methodological apparatus to explore the 'Southern question' of settling and unsettling across the globe.

Crucially, the studies reveal the sentiments, resourcefulness, and agency of those positioned by the powerful within the dichotomies of formal/informal, legitimate/illegal, privileged/marginalized, and so on, who are traditionally identified within the dominant development discourse as mere numbers or designated by intervening institutions as helpless recipients. By focusing on hitherto invisible events and untold stories of adaptation, negotiation, and contestation by people and their communities, this volume of essays takes the ongoing North-South debate in new directions and opens up to readers fresh areas of enquiry.

The book will be of interest to researchers and students in architecture, planning, politics, sociology, as well as built environment professionals.

Weight: 602g
Dimension: 241 x 163 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032043074