Constructing ordinary places: Place-making in urban informal settlements in Mexico

Abstract

Observers from a variety of disciplines agree that informal settlements account for the majority of housing in many cities of the global South. Urban informal settlements, usually defined by certain criteria such as self-build housing, sub-standard services, and residents' low incomes, are often seen as problematic, due to associations with poverty, irregularity and marginalisation. In particular, despite years of research and policy, gaps in urban theory and limited understandings of urban informal settlements mean that they are often treated as outside 'normal' urban considerations, with material effects for residents including discrimination, eviction and displacement. In response to these considerations, this article uses a place-making approach to explore the spatial, social and cultural construction of place in this context, in order to unsettle some of the assumptions underlying discursive constructions of informal settlements, and how these relate to spatial and social marginalisation. Research was carried out using a qualitative, ethnographic methodology in two case study neighbourhoods in Xalapa, Mexico.Mexico offers fertile ground to explore these issues. Despite an extensive land tenure regularisation programme, at least 60 per cent of urban dwellers live in colonias populares, neighbourhoods with informal characteristics. The research found that local discourses reveal complex and ambivalent views of colonias populares, which both reproduce and undermine marginalising tendencies relating to 'informality'. A focus on residents' own place-making activities hints at prospects for rethinking urban informal settlements. By capturing the messy, dynamic and contextualised processes that construct urban informal settlements as places, the analytical lens of place-making offers a view of the multiple influences which frame them. Informed by perspectives from critical social geography which seek to capture the 'ordinary' nature of cities, this article suggests imagining urban informal settlements differently, in order to re-evaluate their potential contribution to the city as a whole.

‘Urban acupuncture’ to alleviate stress in informal settlements in Mexico

“…This 'otherness' is informed by untested stereotypes and prejudices about the morals, abilities and values of squatters. This explains why informality continues to signify 'slum' even after physical conditions are upgraded (Kellet and Napier 1995;Dovey and King 2012;Klaufus 2012;De la Hoz 2013;Lombard 2014).…”

“…First is a conceptualization of informal settlements as fundamentally separate from the formal city, rather than as 'ordinary' , everyday phenomena (Lombard 2014). Alternately, informality is seen as a transitional step into formality, despite abundant evidence that the line between the two is increasingly blurred and well-consolidated informal settlements are visually indistinguishable from formal ones (Hernandez-Garcia and Lopez 2011).…”

An Urban “Mixity”: Spatial Dynamics of Social Interactions and Human Behaviors in the Abese informal Quarter of La Dadekotopon, Ghana

“…It conceptualizes the human agency of "informal settlements". Since individual and collective behaviors within a space are interwoven between a set of social, economic and territorial factors [39], informal settlements become a "spatializing" application of the concept of informality [9,40]. In this vein, informal settlements represent behavior and condition, describing identifiable parts of a space, developed without regard to state planning and laws.…”

L’ancrage au quotidien dans les colonies populaires de la périphérie de Mexico : une approche par les pratiques et les ressources du quartier

“…Le poids du foncier et celui de l'organisation politique sont donc déterminants dans le développement et l'efficacité du réseau social comme ressource intrinsèque, mais aussi comme vecteurs d'autres ressources, comme l'accès aux services urbains ou à la sécurité foncière (en propriété ou en location). En cela, l'organisation socio-politique est au coeur des processus de maturation et de production de l'espace ordinaire pour des espaces souvent analysés comme marginaux (Lombard, 2014(Lombard, , 2015.…”