Metropolitics

Producing Affordable Housing in West Africa: How States Respond to Demand and Local Realities

Mathilde Mouton & translated by Oliver Waine — 2025-10-10T05:00:00Z

Based on her consulting work in West Africa, Mathilde Mouton highlights the limitations of state-led social housing programs. She calls for greater consideration of initiatives in the informal sector to produce housing that is adapted to the needs and resources of local populations.
A plan for 100,000 new homes in Senegal, a plan for 150,000 social housing units in Côte d'Ivoire, a plan for 40,000 dwellings in Burkina Faso, a plan to build 20,000 homes in Benin… Over the past decade, many

- From the Field / Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, Senegal, housing, affordable housing, informal housing, social housing

Integration or Chainsaw: Some Reflections on the Policies of Cruelty in Milei's Argentina Based on the ReNaBaP Case | Integración o motosierra: Reflexiones sobre las políticas de crueldad en la Argentina de Milei a partir del caso ReNaBaP

Facundo A. Corti — 2025-05-20T05:00:00Z

Policy efforts in Argentina to reduce housing inequality have been met with Milei's chainsaw. Facundo A. Corti shows how the state has made the fight for housing equality a one-sided struggle.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle ▼ Pulse aquí para leer en español ▼
The National Registry of Popular Neighborhoods (Registro Nacional de Barrios Populares, or ReNaBaP) was created in 2017 through Decree 358, which institutionalized a registry initiated the previous year by civil society

- From the Field / Argentina, Latin America, South America, Global South, housing, housing policy, informal housing, informal settlements, urban integration, Javier Milei, public policy, working-class neighborhoods

Using Cross-Class Politics to Challenge Urban Housing Inequality in Islamabad, Pakistan

Hafsah Siddiqui — 2025-04-01T05:00:00Z

When redevelopment schemes target a city's poor for removal to provide opportunities for the privileged, how can poor residents assert a right to their home? With Islamabad as a case study, Hafsah Siddiqui shows how cross-class politics can be the basis for collaborative efforts for the poor to maintain a right to the city.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle Islamabad is touted as Pakistan's loveliest city, with lush greenery and clean public spaces. The slogan “Islamabad the

- Essays / Global South, Asia, Pakistan, Islamabad, housing, right to housing, informal housing, urban services, social class, mobilization, urban inequality

Rio de Janeiro: Storms, Militia, and Urban Development

Leandro Benmergui & Rafael Soares Gonçalves & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-11-08T06:00:00Z

The dramatic consequences of storms at the beginning of 2019 in a favela in Rio de Janeiro reveal the ongoing evolution of informal urbanization in the city. The development of militias, as a result of security problems and the withdrawal of public authorities in these neighborhoods, also affects building construction. Leandro Benmergui and Rafael Soares Gonçalves highlight the dangers of these developments.
At the beginning of 2019, in Rio de Janeiro, two violent storms caused a significant

- From the Field / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, favela, militias, informal housing, vulnerable housing, informality, precarity, catastrophe, disaster, Latin America, safety

Repositioning the state's role through water politics in Mexico City's informal settlements

Guillem Ramírez Chico — 2018-03-27T05:00:00Z

Throughout the Mexico City metropolitan area, the struggle for water access often defines the relationship (or lack thereof) between municipal governments and residents. Guillem Ramirez Chico delineates the distinctive local politics of water provision in three of the area's informal settlements, asserting that poor households are frequently left vulnerable in the name of environmental conservation.
In Mexico City, water is used as a political tool to get political support, through client

- From the Field / local government, water, settlements, state, informality, Mexico, informal housing, water access, water politics, informal settlements, state-free spaces, Mexico City

Snowbirds' Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati — 2017-11-07T06:00:00Z

Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the Sonoran desert. Some 50,000 of them live in informal housing: campers, tents, cars and trucks, and self-constructed cabins. In the field with the most economically marginal of these “desert snowbirds,” David Frati observes the complex gift economy that structures their social lives.
Every winter, retired snowbirds reach the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, one of the few places in

- From the Field / camps, care, housing, alternative housing, United States, ethnography, sociabilities, poverty, assistance, informal housing, Arizona, money, resourcefulness, desert, gift economy, nomadism, retirement, snowbirds, concern for others, neighborliness

Land Titling: A Tool, not a Panacea

Kareem Ibrahim & Deena Khalil — 2016-12-20T06:00:00Z

The government of Egypt has long relied on land titling to limit the growth of informal urban residential settlements. Kareem Ibrahim and Deena Khalil argue that while titling addresses problems stemming from informality in some cases, the benefits of this strategy are exaggerated, particularly given that low-income households are excluded from formal credit markets regardless. In Egypt as elsewhere, titling initiatives fail to address more fundamental issues of poverty and marginalization.

- From the Field / property, land, Africa, Global South, informality, Egypt, North Africa, Cairo, land tenure, land rights, land titles, property rights, property titles, property tenure, land titling, informal housing, access to credit

Securing Land Tenure in Egypt: Who Needs Registered Titles?

David Sims — 2016-06-14T05:00:00Z

David Sims challenges popular wisdom on property-rights regimes in non-Western nations by questioning the relevance of formal property titling for poor urban households in Egypt, where informal and semi-formal solutions provide the majority of households with surprisingly secure forms of possession. In light of this—and in the absence of a strong national state—can something as complex and culturally idiosyncratic as property relations be objectified as a development problem in need of a