Metropolitics

Useful Transgressions: Informality, Power, and Urban Life in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

Ryan Thomas Devlin — 2026-02-17T06:00:00Z

Urban informality has been theorized as a process operating at the edges and margins under capitalist urbanization. Yet Outlaw Capital argues that the gray spaces of informality are essential to the vitality of cities, leveraged for different ends by elites and the poor alike.
On the Paraguay side of the Paraná River in Ciudad del Este, smugglers load up small boats with things like electronics and cigarettes bound for the opposite shore and eventually for consumers in Brazil, bypassing

- Reviews / informality, Latin America, South America, Global South, Paraguay, Ciudad del Este, neoliberalism, capitalism, urbanism, urbanization, gray spaces, informal urbanism, urban governance

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

Open-Air Auto Shops: Subsistence Jobs in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Collectif Rosa Bonheur & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-10-25T04:00:00Z

The informal activities of street mechanics observed by Collectif Rosa Bonheur in northern France attest to a much larger subsistence economy at the margins of employment. According to this research collective, the spatial anchoring of these activities, on the borderline of informality, invites us to consider spaces that are often perceived as peripheral and relegated as “working-class centralities.”
In the vicinity of houses, in garages adjacent to dwellings, on sidewalks, in public squares

- From the Field / cars, poverty, precarity, Roubaix, Lille, Hauts-de-France, Northern France, France, working classes, working-class neighborhoods, informality, work, jobs, employment, Nord–Pas-de-Calais

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

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

The Flea Market of Marseille

Michèle Jolé & William Kornblum — 2016-05-17T05:00:00Z

Marseille's flea market (“marché aux puces”) lies at the heart of a vast urban renewal project that could end up wiping the market off the map for good. Michèle Jolé and William Kornblum, who have both adopted Marseille as their hometown, explore the loss that the transformation of this veritable institution would represent for the city's residents and, more generally, for the northern neighborhoods (“les Quartiers Nord”) of Marseille.
“The more we gain distance from the center, the more the

- From the Field / public space, urban renewal, market, Marseille, retail, commerce, informality, urban project

The intricacies of popular housing in the Middle East

Mona Fawaz — 2013-12-18T05:55:00Z

Popular housing is a common trait of Middle-Eastern cities inhabited by migrants and refugees. A recent publication examines how these inhabitants negotiate their presence and manage to build their dwellings through complex and uncertain arrangements at the limit of informality.
It has become customary to claim that the debate on informal land and housing production and exchange is exhausted: the number of publications and dissertations that have addressed this topic has dropped steadily over

- Reviews / housing, Middle East, dwellers, informality