Informal Housing in the Global North

Exploring Practices, Actors and Processes in a Transforming Housing System

Buch | Hardcover

186 Seiten

2025
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-032-64525-4 (ISBN)

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Informal Housing in the Global North proposes analytical and conceptual approaches to investigate the progressing ‘informalisation’ of contemporary housing in the Global North and beyond.

Amidst the ongoing housing crisis, the reading of informalities in the so-called North has increasingly disrupted the conventional understanding of local cities as fully regulated, well-structured and formal. By juxtaposing contested, successful and ‘under- the- radar’ ordinary housing phenomena across various income levels, this volume seeks to unpack and document the embeddedness of informality in mid- and high-income cities. This investigation reveals the pervasive and hybrid nature of local housing systems, in which formal frameworks defining modes of utilising spaces and architectural design are continuously reinterpreted by users, public sector actors and market entities alike. It reflects on everyday housing pathways and the agency of those who, by preference or necessity, engage with solutions conventionally labelled as informal.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of housing studies, planning, architecture and urban sociology as well as practitioners working in the field of housing.

The Introduction and chapter 8 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Jakub Galuszka is Junior Professor of Sustainable Cities and Climate Change at the HafenCity University Hamburg. His research focuses on housing, informality, co-production and urban sustainability. Currently, he leads two research projects: ‘Inconspicuous Transformations: the Socio-Spatial Reconfiguration of Formal Housing in Europe,’ funded by the DFG, and ‘Passive Solutions in Self-Build and Incremental Housing: Towards Inclusive Socio-Ecological Transformation in Rapidly Urbanising Areas,’ supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.

List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors

1. Introduction – Perspectives on housing informality in the ‘North’
Jakub Gałuszka

Part I: Encroachment
2. Formal/informal continuum? Secondary dwelling production and digital rental markets in Sydney, Australia
Zahra Nasreen, Pranita Shrestha and Nicole Gurran
3. Navigating Hong Kong's informal housing: Stakeholders’ interactions on spatial quality in subdivided homes
Maggie Ma Kingsley and Jen Lam

Part II: Solidarities
4. Otherness and informality: everyday tactics of social inclusion among Oxford boating community
Jakub Gałuszka
5. Refugee access to housing in fermany: (In)formal restrictions and opportunities
Nihad El-Kayed

Part III: Struggles and appropriation
6. For a spatial politics of dwelling. Awareness, contestation and homemaking in the individual occupations of public housing in Naples, Italy
Emiliano Esposito
7. Making a platz in the city: How Roma families appropriate urban space to have a home in Paris suburbs
Céline Véniat

Part IV: Gatekeeping
8. Unpacking everyday management in a City Improvement District: property caretakers as street-level bureaucrats in Ekhaya, Hillbrow, Johannesburg
Thembani Mkhize
9. Living in someone else’s place: an exploration of subletting practices in Berlin
in Times of Housing Crisis.
Lucas Elsner, Minou Bouchehri, Olga Łojewska and Anna Potanina
10. Concluding remarks and way forward
Jakub Galuszka

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	19.09.2025
Reihe/Serie	Explorations in Housing Studies
Zusatzinfo	1 Tables, black and white; 10 Line drawings, black and white; 6 Halftones, black and white; 16 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	530 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
Themenwelt	Technik ► Bauwesen
ISBN-10	1-032-64525-3 / 1032645253
ISBN-13	978-1-032-64525-4 / 9781032645254
Zustand	Neuware