Entanglements of Periphery and Informality in Mexico City

Abstract

Mexico City is a well-known case of urban expansion. Most of the growth has been in its peripheries, occurring during two phases of housing privatization: a predominantly self-built urbanization by residents establishing irregular settlements (starting in the 1930s); and a relatively recent surge of mass-produced small-scale single-family housing built by state-sponsored development companies (underway since the year 2000). Informality, we argue, should not be understood as a mode of housing production setting in opposition self-build practices against industry-led and/or state-sponsored processes, but rather as a dia lectical urbanization logic shaped by the entanglements of in/formal processes in gov ern ance practices, land privatization and regularization, and urban infrastructure and ser vices deficits. We are particularly interested in a dominant narrative whereby the embed dedness of informality is constantly underplayed and irregular settlements are cast as a residual category, a problem to tolerate or in need of intervention, or the inevitable combination of demographic growth and housing shortage, rather than the direct outcome of urban policies and development processes. Conversely, recent housing policy in Mexico is officially narrated as an economic stimulus, a means to control and order (irregular) urban expansion, and an impulse to democratize homeownership. Our discussion of the entanglements of informality in Mexico City is based on an extended literature review of academic articles and official reports (predominantly in English), supplemented by a series of street and neighborhood explorations (in the summers of 2012 and 2013) across the metropolis.

When Diverse Norms Meet Weak Plans: The Organizational Dynamics of Urban Rubble Clearance in Post‐Earthquake Haiti

“…Furthermore, the fact that owners cleared their own property meant that they were able to move back to their properties first, leaving poorer renters as the majority in the camps (Calhan, ). This pattern, in which already vulnerable groups bear disproportionate risks and costs in the face of disaster, is similar to that documented in other contexts, ranging from fires in Johannesburg (Murray, ) to post‐disaster relocation in Aceh (Samuels, ) and flooding in Mexico City (Gilbert and De Jong, ).…”

Understanding formal and informal relationships in settlement upgrading for planning just and inclusive cities: the case of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

“…Having possession rights under the Land Law 2001 also positioned residents of Phka in a state of 'permanent temporariness' (Yiftachel, 2009), waiting for their legal status to be formalized by state authorities under the state's Systematic Land Registration (SLR). As other studies have found (see Wigle, 2014;Keo, Bouhours & Bouhours 2015;Gilbert & De Jong, 2015;Rolnik 2015), this 'graying of spaces' and ambiguous classification of informal settlements by the state has become 'the rule rather than exception' in Phnom Penh and other cities of the global south forming a 'new mode of urbanism' (Roy & AlSayyad, 2004;Yiftachel, 2015). It is common that settlements like Phka are placed in a kind of planning limbo used deliberately by the state to manipulate the classification of urban informality to pursue the interests of private investors and accumulate land for development (Rolnik, 2015).…”

“…I evidenced that informality is not something that takes place outside of the state and formal planning systems but is in fact implicated within these systems. As explained in this chapter, these entanglements between formality and informality in land use planning are not unique to the case of Phnom Penh, and different studies in the global south (Roy, 2009;Wigle, 2014;Gilbert and De Jong, 2015) now suggest these relationships are deeply intertwined in urban production. For Roy (2009), informality exists at the very heart of the state and is an integral part of the territorial practices of state power.…”

“…As the case of Phka evidences, the relationships between formality and informality in land use planning, in particular the state's involvement in urban informality, are characterized by producing and reproducing social and spatial inequalities through the 'graying of spaces' (Wigle, 2014;Gilbert and De Jong, 2015;Yiftachel, 2015). In this case, land legal frameworks made Phka residents' land tenure security vulnerable by placing them in a 'gray space' and a state of 'permanent temporariness' (Yiftachel, 2009), waiting for their legal status to be defined by the state.…”

“…In 2006 The exclusion of Phka from SLR evidences the state's implication of informality by promoting processes of spatial de-regulation and exclusion (Roy, 2009). Furthermore, this exclusion evidences how 'gray spaces' and ambiguity, as in many other cities of the global south (see Wigle, 2014;Gilbert & De Jong, 2015), are manipulated in urban planning processes in Phnom Penh to benefit the interests of powerful actors, threatening the citizenship rights, and individual and collective belonging of residents of Phka to their place of residence, community and city.…”