Abandon the Slum? Toward an Alternative Recognition of Urban Informal Dwelling

Abstract

The focus on urban poverty in the Global South has centered on slum-centric discussions of urban marginality to explain the supposed crisis of Third World cities. Evidently, ideological and material eradication of slums is symptomatic of the erasure of urban poverty and is regarded as a developmental panacea to address all urban problems. Notwithstanding the political significance of this term to understand and respond to subaltern urbanism, the Eurocentric gaze of urban scholars and practitioners in using slum, as an analytical and developmental category, has impeded the recognition of varied forms of dwelling practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with footpath-dwelling communities in Mumbai, I argue that to understand the diversity of dwelling in the city, attention needs to be extended to what could be called non-slums, spaces that embody a set of practices and negotiations that are spatially distinct from those characterizing places officially labeled as slums and expand beyond density politics. Unlike residents of so-called slums, these groups are often dispersed and numerically weak. It is this spatial organization (or the lack of it) that shapes their everyday politics in making their place within the city. The exposed nature of their habitation makes their everyday living transient and sets forth a form of spatiality that is distinct from dense neighborhoods labeled slums. While slums are being peripheralized through various policy and state interventions, these groups continue to hold on to the urban core and in doing so produce new spatializations of poverty and varied subaltern subjectivities of dispossession and belonging.

Shifting peripheries: Dhaka's rickshaw garages and mess dormitories as spaces of work and movement

“…We offer that it is also possible to interpret such practices differently, namely as efforts to establish a continuity of work and income. Shifting thus helps us to appreciate that there are “always invisible durabilities within the ephemeral” (Dharia, 2022: 22), while also addressing “attention to practices and negotiations within the city that are spatially distinct from those of slums” (Banerjee, 2022: 4). It highlights how the improvisations that characterize precarious urban life in South Asia (Dharia, 2022; Kamalipour and Dovey, 2020; Vasudevan, 2015) are not always aimed at establishing a permanence of place and living.…”

“…In our attempt to move beyond categories and epistemologies of habitation, we take inspiration from authors who have criticized the centrality of slums in making sense of Southern urbanism (Arabindoo, 2011; Banerjee, 2022; Gilbert, 2007; Rao, 2006; Roy, 2011). In many ways, slums have become the predominant frame through which cities in the global South “are perceived, understood, mapped, and created” (Arabindoo, 2011: 639).…”

“…Gilbert (2007: 698) points out that the term slum has helped to stir fears about mass-urbanization and rural–urban migration, thereby essentially morphing the complexities of urban inequality and precariousness into a recognizable image and distinct habitat. This has impeded the “recognition of varied forms of dwelling practices” (Banerjee, 2022), while also restricting the scope of urban analysis. Indeed, Rao (2006: 227) observes a gradual slippage from slum as population and terrain to “slum as theory”.…”

“…Indeed, the tension between precariousness and improvement that fuels the lateral production of urban peripheries (Caldeira, 2017: 6) is often intuitively framed as a contrast between improvised and permanent dwellings – between tin sheds and high-rises. This preoccupation with habitation and the “generally substandard settlements in which large segments of the urban poor live and work” (Weinstein, 2014) has been encouraged by a myopic concentration on slums as the dominant frame for making sense of Southern urbanism (see Arabindoo, 2011; Banerjee, 2022; Roy, 2011). Shot through with allusions to shelter and habitation, the category of “slum” fails to capture how people’s lives and livelihoods are part of an “intricate set of connections and flows stretching across multiple physical spaces” (Arabindoo, 2011: 643).…”