Temporary appropriation and urban informality: Exploring the subtle distinction

The commodification of temporary housing

“…While there is a growing body of literature critically discussing how temporary urbanism affects urban social life (Vallance et al, 2017;Lai et al, 2018;Galdini, 2019), and another line of research focusing on the potentials of temporary use for the flexible development of urban spaces in general (Özdemirli, 2014;Németh & Langhorst, 2014;Dubeaux & Sabot, 2018;Cardullo et al, 2018), research on how different forms of temporary use affect the housing situation in cities is still thin (Lara-Hernandez et al, 2020;van Holm, 2020). More qualitative and quantitative research is therefore needed to understand how temporary housing changes everyday life in cities and potentially leads to precarious living situations for lower income groups.…”

In/formal reappropriations: Spatialised needs and desires in residential alleys in Melbourne, Australia

“…In the context of scholarship on urban informality, this paper is primarily concerned with informal spatial practices in the Global North, where informality operates as a balancing concept to either legitimise or subvert formality while also carrying multiple meanings. Lara-Hernandez et al (2020) illustrate the difference between informality as deliberate resistance against the neoliberal city, as everyday placemaking, and as practices that fall outside of legal and economic structures. Marx and Kelling (2019) similarly illustrate different ways of experiencing informality: as laws (legislature and property rights), as a condition (descriptive qualifier based on some criteria) and as socio-political currency (socio-spatial knowledge production).…”

The Political Potential of Urban Informality in the Global North: A Rancièrian Perspective

“…First, we note that scholars working on urban informality in the Global North have focused on a wide variety of informal urban phenomena. These include, for example, informal settlement camps (Picker, 2019; Solimene, 2019), squatting (Di Feliciantonio, 2017; Maestri, 2019; Pradel-Miquel, 2017; Pruijt, 2013; Sparks, 2017), unlawful (re)construction and renting (Chiodelli, 2019; Lombard, 2019), community gardens (Certomà & Notteboom, 2017; Eizenberg, 2011; Hou, 2014; Purcell & Tyman, 2014), street vending (Devlin, 2011; Ha, 2015; Vallianatos, 2014), leisure (Lara-Hernandez et al, 2020), and specific policies and governance (Jaffe & Koster, 2019). 3 This variety gives rise to a highly fragmented landscape of informality that, at times, hampers a clear and unambiguous understanding of the concept.…”