The production of informal space: A critical atlas of housing informalities in Italy between public institutions and political strategies

Seismic risk assessment of a large metropolitan area by means of simulated earthquakes

“…Only since 1981, the Regions were obliged to issue «rules for the adaptation of general and detailed urban planning tools in force, as well as the criteria for the formation of urban planning tools for preventing seismic risk». This means that only about 16% of buildings are built with characteristics of resistance to seismic stress and that a considerable number of buildings was built without a formal authorization, a practice which has been quite common in Southern Europe and in Italy [40,41]. The study, based on the available historical cartographies, has produced a comprehensive GIS map of the growth of urban settlements in study area, starting from the early 1900s up to 2016.…”

Spatial (in)justice in pandemic times: bottom-up mobilizations in dialogue

“…Milan, such as a lot of European cities, reveals instead a very different geography through its gradients of peripherality (Cognetti, Gambino, Lareno Faccini, 2020), which origins are Between the favelas of Rio and the public housing districts of European cities such as Milan there are many differences concerning formal/informal and institutional genesis; spatial and infrastructural conditions; opportunities in the elds of income, mobility and everyday life. Some aspects, however, reveal converging but still latent processes between the two contexts: 1) some European peripheries are increasingly being conformed both as shelters and con nement for marginal existences, due to their economic and juridical status with respect to the national and local regulations (Holston, 2008); 2) informal dwelling regimes have been widespread in the European periphery, through many different arrangements of the informality concept (Chiodelli et al, 2021); 3) the rising of deprivation and vulnerability in some areas has opened up the eld of the humanitarian intervention in the Global North (with the resettlement of international 's programs in different European countries). All these aspects suggest the existence of similarities -a sort of 'favelization' -conforming a wider process of 'planetary urbanization'-i.e., the extension of infrastructures and the harsh logic of late capitalism over the entire surface of the planet (Brenner, 2018).…”

Reply

“…I was particularly concerned with the uncritical lens being applied to the study of informality ‘from above’ in the U.S. and broader global North. Unlike some more nuanced work, like that of Chiodelli et al (2021) and his Italian compatriots where informality of the state is analysed rigorously, much work gaining traction in U.S. planning circles treated this type informality as a new planning ‘hack’; a way to ‘disrupt’ ponderous bureaucracy and plan more efficiently and directly. Approaches like Tactical Urbanism (Lydon and Garcia, 2015; Silva, 2016, Wohl, 2018) view the realm of informality as a tool for planners and urban professionals (in both in the public and private realm) to harness rather than as a widening zone of extra-bureaucratic practice on the part of a variety of social actors that presents both opportunities and perils.…”