Article

Journal of Planning Literature

1-20
Modes of Informal Urban Development: ª The Author(s) 2017
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A Global Phenomenon DOI: 10.1177/0885412217737340
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Richard Harris1

Abstract
The concept of informality has often been misunderstood. Its, especially, urban character is rarely appreciated. With respect to
urban development, it was once thought to distinguish the Global South, a view that is changing, but an alternative has not been
systematically articulated. Based on an extensive survey of literatures, this article clarifies the urban character of informality,
articulates its global relevance, and proposes a framework for understanding its major modes: latent, diffuse, embedded, overt,
and dominant. Their relative frequency distinguishes cities, regions, and nations while their identification facilitates the
comparison of places.

Keywords
housing, international planning and development, planning law, planning, theory, real estate, urban history, economic development

Many of those who have written about urban planning have Scope and Definition
treated informal development as a black hole: something that
First, it must be said that the concept of informality has been
exists but which can be observed only indirectly and which for
much abused and misunderstood. It has been defined narrowly,
most purposes can be ignored. North American textbooks have
loosely, and in various ways. It has been applied to the econ-
routinely ignored the topic (e.g., Cullingworth and Caves
omy as a whole, and also to the specific process of urban
2014). So, too, did a recent award-winning survey of Planning
Ideas that Matter (Sanyal, Vale, and Rosan 2012). Even a development, but rarely by the same people or in the same
breath. Arguably, its especially urban character has been too
forthcoming Handbook on Planning History barely touches the
rarely appreciated. With respect to urban development, it was
issue, although its global scope embraces world regions where
once supposed to distinguish the global South. Neuwirth (2006)
informality is still the norm (Hein 2018). Implicitly, many
suggested that there were a billion squatters worldwide, but
writers have assumed that informality represents the failure,
none of the contemporary places that he featured were in the
or the limitations, of planning, and lies beyond its scope.
North; Connolly (2009, 20) has shown that “irregular” settle-
This view is not ubiquitous. Some urbanists have pointed
ment, defined broadly, accounts for half of all dwellings in
out that it is not only planners who execute plans: developers
frame subdivisions, owner builders frame houses, and all of Mexico City, but no one has made comparable calculations for
London, England, or my hometown, Hamilton, Ontario. That
them plan. This assertion can obscure the distinction between
said, opinion is changing: more writers recognize that inform-
what is legal and what is not, a difference that always matters,
ality takes many forms and exists everywhere, but a consistent
but it is not mere pedantry: students and practitioners of plan-
method of comparing cities has not been articulated. Based on
ning should remember that rational, considered action with
an extensive survey of literatures, this article clarifies the urban
respect to the built environment is not their sole preserve.
character of informality, articulates its relevance to all societ-
Building on this understanding, many have argued that the
ies, and proposes a conceptual framework within which the
boundaries between formal and informal are usually blurred.
The two coexist and are interdependent, while “insurgent” experience of particular cities and nations can be compared.
Following Feige (1990, 990), I understand informality to be
planning can incorporate informal practices and so render them
“those actions of economic agents that fail to adhere to the
legitimate (Briassoulis 1997; Chalana and Hou 2016; Dupont
et al. 2016; Miraftab 2009). At the extreme, informality
becomes so widespread that it defines the entire planning
regime (Roy 2009). Indeed, an extensive body of work on 1
School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, Ontario,
informal urban development in the global South has empha- Canada
sized its ubiquity while noting wide local and regional varia-
Corresponding Author:
tions. The purpose of this article is to take stock of and Richard Harris, School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University,
reinterpret this work, concluding with some suggestions as to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4K1.
how we can come to terms with that diversity within ubiquity. Email: harrisr@mcmaster.ca
2 Journal of Planning Literature XX(X)
established institutional rules or are denied their protection”
(cf. Portes and Haller 2005, 404). This is now a widely
accepted definition. It highlights the relationship between the
state and society, while—in principle—lending itself to precise
identification: either an activity that is governed by rules con-
forms to regulation or it does not. In practice, its application has
been inconsistent, because writers have blurred different defi-
nitions and because activities that, in one context, are illegal, or
at least “irregular” may, at another time and place, be perfectly
acceptable. A common example is when residents use cast-off
materials to erect shacks. There can be good reasons for study-
ing all such instances, but it is also important to distinguish
those that violate regulations from those that do not.
Imprecise or inconsistent usage has blurred the fact that
informality is peculiarly relevant to urban settings and notably
with respect to land development. Urban land is distinctive in
that social and economic pressures almost compel it to become
real estate—a commodity. Then, too, proximity increases the
impact of externalities, which requires the regulation of land
use, construction, and occupancy. Regulation requires a greater
role for the state and, by extension, more potential informality.
In a village, amateur builders are unexceptionable; in a city,
they may become unacceptable. The change often begins, and
may be most apparent, in peri-urban or suburban contexts
where rural land is dragged, sometimes kicking and screaming,
into the urban fold.
In principle, these considerations apply equally in New
York and Kolkata, or for that matter in Eldoret, Kenya, and
Hamilton. In practice, they are manifested in different ways.
One way of putting this would be to say that there are degrees
of informality, Kolkata having more and Hamilton less. That is
a reasonable approximation, one implied by many writers (cf.
Van Gelder 2010). But it can be carried further and made more
useful. In many fields of social life, including politics and the
economy, quantitative growth can produce qualitative change.
As a threshold is crossed, a modal shift occurs: with enough
potential customers, a service can be provided, a large enough
demonstration may topple a government, or the changing com-
position of a neighborhood crosses a tipping point (Granovetter
1978). So it is with informality. My argument is that it is not the
presence or even just the extent of informality that distin-
guishes places, but its modal mix.
The argument can be developed in analytical terms but gains
resonance when infused with historical understanding. The
term and concept of informality has a history that still informs
its meaning; its form is shaped by the juxtaposition of differing
systems of property, often a colonial legacy; its presence com-
monly arises because of a temporal disjuncture—regulations
may be imposed far ahead of any need— or they may lag
behind dynamic urban growth. And so informality is always
in flux, its growth or decline being generated “passively” by a
new regulation or through the actions of the regulated (Castells
and Portes 1989, 298–99; Van Gelder 2013, 509). A snapshot
misses its causal dynamic.
Recognizing this dynamic, this article aims to clarify the
global relevance of the concept of informality for urban
planning and research. Having discussed a particular meaning
of the term and acknowledged its limitations (section 1), I
develop the argument that it is peculiarly urban in character
and geographically ubiquitous (sections 2 and 3). Once we
understand why it exists (section 4), it becomes possible and
arguably useful to distinguish five modal forms (section 5).
These I label latent, diffuse, embedded, overt, and dominant.
As I suggest in the conclusion, this framework helps us to make
sense of the rich body of evidence on informal urban develop-
ment while pointing to ways in which it can be compared and
consolidated.
The Character and Limitations of “Informal”
Until at least the 1990s, most writers assumed that nations in
the global North and South developed in different ways and
that to understand them we needed different conceptual tools.
One way the South was seen to be different was in the extent of
informality. Initially, simplifying the influential arguments of
Hart, many spoke of a distinctive “informal sector” which
reformulated the old distinction between tradition and moder-
nity (Leaf 2005, 112; cf. Hart 2010; Tabak 2000, 5). After this
view was widely critiqued (e.g., Moser 1984; Peattie 1987,
1995), many came to see informality as any activity that chal-
lenged or evaded state regulation and taxes (Castells and Portes
1989; Portes and Haller 2005). In a context where neoliberal
policies in the North were promoting deregulation, many con-
cluded that the concept had relevance everywhere (Gaffikin,
Perry, and Kundu 2011; Sassen 1988–1989; Tabak and
Critchlow 2000).
This understanding—of the pervasive, global character of
informality—has not yet reshaped the way scholars think about
urban development. Most of those who have written about the
informal economy have paid “astonishingly” little attention to
the built environment: major surveys have ignored this topic
(Altroc 2012, 172; Castells and Portes 1989; Gërxhani 2004;
Lagos 1995; Losby et al. 2002; Portes and Haller 2005; but see
Hansen and Vaa 2004; McFarlane and Waibel 2012). Even
rarer have been attempts to comprehend the interrelation of the
various types of informalities (Kudva 2009). This is curious: as
Hansen and Vaa (2004, 18) note, de facto informality in urban
housing is more visible and probably better documented than
any other of its forms (Hansen and Vaa 2004, 18). But, from the
1960s, those who wrote about urban development were slow to
adopt the language of informality. As late as 1984, Caroline
Moser, who had previously written about squatter settlements
in Ecuador, was able to survey the literature on the “informal
sector” without reference to the processes of urban develop-
ment. Because the most striking examples of informality take
the form of squatting, initially in Latin America, many still
treat the concept as synonymous with the unauthorized settle-
ment of land (e.g., Huchzermeyer and Karam 2006; Van Gelder
2013; cf. Laquian 1964; Mangin 1967; Turner 1963, 1967).
Others view it as a catchall for irregularity, self-help and grass-
roots spontaneity, lack of basic services, or even the absence of
professional design (AlSayyad 2004; Berner 2012; Birch,
Harris
Chattaraj, and Wachter 2016; Gouverneur 2015; Hernández,
Kellett, and Allen 2010). And so Klaufus and Lindert (2012,
70) speak of it as a “container notion,” while Fischer,
McCann, and Auyeroo (2014, 1) use it to refer to
“underserviced, poor, [or] legally precarious” settlements.
Indeed, in an influential survey, Davis (2006) referred
vaguely to an “informal sector,” long after development econ-
omists had abandoned that term. Such catchall definitions
lead to unhelpful generalizations. For example, AlSayyad’s
(2004) suggestion that informal practices have been the his-
torical norm blurs the precise impact of regulation.
Slowly, however, usage has converged on an argument that
urban informality exists in relation to the state (e.g., Guha-
Khasnobis, Kanbur, and Ostrom 2006). The most articulate and
influential scholar has been Ananya Roy, who has suggested
that informality is a mode of urban development and, in a book
and several papers, framed the argument that “the state has the
power . . . to determine what is informal and what is not” (Roy
2005, 149; cf. Roy 2003, 2009, 2011). This is true by definition,
but Roy also means that informality is politically constructed:
states are not neutral arbiters, politicians and officials have
interests, and both manipulate the boundaries of informality
to suit their own ends. Those are important insights which I
will argue are relevant to our understanding of the modal forms
that informality can take. But much informality never rises to
the level of public debate or political calculation: it involves the
inadvertent violation of regulations, the existence of which
state agencies are barely aware and not much interested in; it
commonly involves people who, far from wishing to challenge
the state, are eager to keep their activities hidden from it (Bayat
2000, 550). The state defines what is informal, but whether
planners and other state agents are always conscious of that
power and use it is an open question.
If urbanists have been slow to view informality as being
framed by state regulation, it may be because they realize that
it provides limited guidance on how to handle nonstate sources
of legitimacy. Such sources are often present. There may exist a
widespread feeling that the law is unjust. Thus, students of
squatting have emphasized that settlers commonly believe their
actions to be a reasonable response to their desperate, unsatis-
fied need for shelter (e.g., Cornelius 1976, 255; Fernandes and
Varley 1998, 4; Jenkins 2009, 103; Smart 1999, 104). Resi-
dents of favelas have no doubts about their right to live where
and how they do (Perlman 1976).Such beliefs are further legit-
imized where two or more systems of law coexist. As Simon
(1992, 109) has observed, “settlement which is officially
deemed illegal in terms of Western law, may be perfectly legit-
imate according to customary law.” Legal pluralism has been
discussed in general treatments of local, regional, and national
economies (Benda-Beckman 2001; Benton 1994; Griffiths
1986; Tamanaha 2000). Arguably, it is especially important for
understanding the process of urban development. In all preur-
ban societies, land is the main source of wealth. Its commodi-
fication and formalization, above all in an urban context, have
been vital for economic growth, development, and moderniza-
tion. At any rate, Ferguson (2011) suggests that property rights
3
is one of six features that enabled the rise of the West, one
which was indissolubly linked to the rise of capitalism. Waller-
stein (2012, 7) has claimed that establishing “a systematic legal
basis for what it called title to land” was “the single most
important change imposed by the modern world system.” A
version of this belief was long held by colonial, and now post-
colonial powers, as well as international agencies such as the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (De Soto
2000; Large 1973; Simpson 1976; Weaver 2003; cf. Mooya
2011). One consequence of colonization is that, everywhere
from Africa to Asia and the Middle East, new understandings
of landed property have challenged established traditions and
lifeways (Benda-Beckman 2001; Krueckeberg 1999; Leaf
1993; McAuslan 2000; Razzaz 1994). And in other regions,
the situation was complicated by the introduction, and subse-
quent removal, of state communism. Land tenure in Eastern
Europe and China still has something of that overlay (McGee
et al. 2007, 73; Li and Huang 2012; Shieh 2011; Verdery 1999).
Here, the meaning of informality is open to debate.
The property systems exported by European powers were
themselves more complicated than is often supposed: in Anglo-
American law, there are approximately fifty forms of land
tenure (Doebele 1983, 70–71), and their basis differs from the
regimes exported by France and Spain, as all three do from the
Sharia law established under Ottoman rule and now dominant
in the Middle East. Hence, although no squatters have auto-
matic rights in the British excolonies, in Argentina they have
the right to land after twenty years of peaceful possession,
while in Jordan or Turkey they may only need to erect a roofed
dwelling overnight (Neuwirth 2006, 143–73; Razzaz 1994,
28n16; Van Gelder 2010, 251n9; Yonder 1987). Colonial pow-
ers exported their systems of property in a variety of contexts
(Simpson 1976). One way of generalizing this is to say that this
introduced “individualistic” forms of ownership to societies
whose understanding of land was communal (e.g., Porter
2011, 116). But some writers argue that this is a false binary
(Benda-Beckman, Benda-Beckman, and Wiber 2006; Kruecke-
berg 1999). After all, individualistic systems make provision
for restraints that embody the public interest, while the com-
munal label is a catchall that can be “so vague as to be mis-
leading in virtually any specific situation” (Bruce 1988, 24). In
sum, the encounter of two systems of landed property has been
common and hardly ever neat, while taking different forms
around the world.
As a result, it is normal for two or more systems of property
to coexist or intersect (Durand-Lasserve 1990; McAuslan
2002). Such situations are common enough in Latin America
(Connolly 2009; Santos 1977; Wigle 2010), South Asia (Ben-
jamin 2004; Kundu 2002), and Southeast Asia (Erni and Bian-
poen 1980, 71; Colombijn 2010; Evers and Korff 2000; Leaf
1993), while being routine in West (Aronson 1978; Durand-
Lasserve, Durand-Lasserve, and Selid 2015; Grant 2009, 118–
20; Ikejiofor 2006) and in Central and East Africa (Jenkins
2004; Nkurunziza 2007; Trefon 2004). It may be impossible
to reconcile juxtaposed sources of legitimacy. Illustrating this,
Simpson (1976, 224) repeats the apocryphal statement of an
4 Journal of Planning Literature XX(X)
African chief that in his culture “land belongs to a vast family
of which many are dead, few are living and countless numbers
are still unborn,” an understanding not readily melded with
British law. Commonly, however, the result is a hybrid
arrangement, usually tipping toward some version of the West-
ern model (Erni and Bianpoen 1980; Leaf 2009, 59; Myers
2011; Trefon 2004, 4). This can be messy. Aronson (1978)
discusses a case where family-owned land in Ibadan, Nigeria,
was “sold” to a single individual even though only seven of the
twenty-five people who had rights to the property had been
consulted—a recipe for dispute; Holston (2008) identifies six
types of informal settlements in Brazil; Benjamin (2004) finds
ten forms of tenure in Bangalore, while Soliman (2004) reports
bewildering variety in Cairo. The rise of Western property law
took centuries (e.g., Karr 2015; Springett 1982), and its victory
is complete nowhere. Even in the United States today, land is
not always, simply, “money with trees on it” (Large 1973,
1081). In other words, there are more dimensions to property
rights than are implied by the concept of informality.
As if this were not complex enough, even state law can be
contradictory; government often fails to speak with a single
voice (Smart 1999). Research in Istanbul, Amman (Jordan),
Kolkata, and Lisbon, for example, has revealed ambiguities
in the law (Kuyucu 2014) and lack of official consensus (Raz-
zaz 1994, 33); that state agencies may violate their own regu-
lations (Roy 2009, 81) or fail to coordinate their actions (Soares
and Stüssi 1990, 256). Especially where irregular development
is common, there is often a difference in attitude between per-
missive politicians and political parties, which aim to cultivate
votes, and officials whose job is to enforce the law (Roy 2003,
144–46). Sometimes official agencies flout that law; the
Hyderabad Development Agency once acted as an illegal sub-
divider (Payne 1989, 41). Agencies express different interests;
legislators create laws that officials fail to enforce; local and
national governments may not think alike. The gap between
municipalities and governments with wider regional or national
responsibility is especially common. It is one of many anarchic
elements in Kinshasa (de Boek 2012, 317) and a major feature
of urbanization in China (Leaf 2002, 2007, 182; Ma 2013; Sun
and Liu 2015). Clearly, then, the concept of informality alone
does not capture the full complexity of property law, and hence
the role and capacity of municipal planning.
None of this means that we should abandon the concept or
seek another definition. In some places and times, as is appar-
ently case in Recife, Brazil, formal rights are not hegemonic
(Fischer 2016, 142). But there are few places where the state is
not the dominant agency of social legitimation, with a mono-
poly on the legitimate use of force. Informality, as it is defined
here, is not a sufficient conceptual tool in understanding urban
development, but it is necessary.
The Peculiarly Urban, and Suburban,
Character of Informality
If informality is understood to include inadequate shelters that
lack piped water and sanitation, then it can be found
everywhere, most commonly in rural areas. But when defined
in relation to state regulation, its urban nature stands out.
Historians and economists agree that when the market value
of property increases so, too, does the pressure to establish
“hard-edged rules to manage it” (Rose 1994, 199; cf. Barzel
1989; Demsetz 1967). This is demonstrably true for land, even
in rural areas as they are drawn into the global economy (Feeny
1988; Platteau 2002). It is doubly true in urban settings, where
land prices are typically much higher (Dunkerley 1983, 7).
Steeper prices encourage careful measurement, documentation,
and enforcement of property boundaries. That is why, soon
after Hong Kong was founded by the British, a precise land
survey was introduced; much later, as land values soared, a
resurvey was undertaken to higher standards of precision (Nis-
sim 2008, 137). An analogous process has been described for
cities in sub-Saharan Africa, where urban conditions have fos-
tered individual ownership (Dickerman 1988, 84–85). Urban
proximity also increases the impact of externalities, such as
those generated by noise or pollution, whose incidence declines
away from the source. Their control therefore requires the reg-
ulation of land use, construction, and occupancy. As a result, no
type of place is more carefully regulated than a city.
Although we often assume that regulation is imposed by the
state, many restraints have been a response to pressure from
private agents (Ben-Joseph 2005, 187–88). Indeed, some land
use planning and enforcement are still undertaken by private or
civil society organizations. In the United States, zoning and
building regulations were often introduced by land developers
as a marketing strategy (Weiss 1987). Their modern counter-
parts cater to a growing demand for common-interest develop-
ments; some of which are gated, privately regulated, and
guarded (McKenzie 2011). There are now many parallels to
such private forms of planning elsewhere in the world (e.g.,
Andersson and Moroni 2014; Hudalah and Firman 2012;
Glasze, Webster, and Frantz 2006). Nair (2005, 133–34), for
example, has shown that in Bangalore it is private companies
that cater to the demand for thoroughly planned and tightly
regulated projects. But in most cities, the first dominant agent
of documentation, regulation, and enforcement—whether of
land titles, contracts, or of building, land use, and occupancy
regulations—is the state. That is why government regulations
are more common in urban areas, and why the scope of inform-
ality is greater there.
That potential is not always realized (Portes and Haller
2005, 409). Rule breaking is not always common in urban
areas. Its incidence usually depends on the state’s desire and
capacity to enforce its laws, set against the willingness and
ability of local residents to meet them. But as the number
and scope of regulations increase so does the range of pos-
sible violations, not to mention sources of conflict and cor-
ruption. A recent study has confirmed that the incidence of
informality and bribery increases with the degree of regula-
tion: in this regard, Asia is more extreme than Latin Amer-
ica (Monkkonen and Ronconi 2016, 44). It may well be that
the most institutionally corrupt places are big cities, where
regulation is most common.
Harris
Historically and geographically, the urban fringe has been
the thin end of the wedge. As cities grow, development pushes
outward. In regulated environments, this takes the form of
suburbs: compact, continuous development. Where there are
fewer controls, development sprawls discontinuously into
exurban or peri-urban territory. It may take years or decades
for such areas to become fully urbanized. This can produce
striking juxtapositions in land use (Fureseth and Lapping
1999; Ginsburg 1991; Simon 2008). In Southeast Asia, McGee
(1991) has named this transitional territory desakota (desa ¼
town, kota ¼ village), and Harms (2011, 18) has described a
typical scene outside Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: “the land-
scape emerges as a collection of juxtapositions: buffaloes bathe
in front of factory gates, rubber cutout soles from the local shoe
factory line the dirt roads leading to rice fields . . . and fancy
multi-colored concrete-covered aluminum-trimmed multilevel
brick houses with gingerbread rooftops rise up next to shacks
made of scrap metal and plywood.” As rural and fringe land is
converted to urban use, it jumps in value and so do the stakes,
the need for precision, the impact of externalities, and the like-
lihood of conflict. Razzaz (1994) has provided a fine example
of this process in his study of the settlement of Yajouz, Jordan,
as it became a suburb of Amman, while Kombe (2000) has
shown something similar for suburban Dar es Salaam. In such
places, conditions may improve over time, but as regulations
proliferate so does the potential for informality.
Where the regulations are established early, where rates of
urbanization are slow, and where states are strong, the whole
process may be planned. Today, this is the norm in Northwes-
tern Europe, somewhat less so in the United States. Elsewhere,
the agents of planning and commodification are private devel-
opers or individuals, squatter settlements being the obvious
example (cf. Balaban 2010). Here, the absence of land use or
building regulation often means that the only informal element
is the absence of land rights. The earliest, well-documented
examples occurred in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s
(Mangin 1967; Turner 1963, 1967). Here, the boundaries of
building sites were at first loosely defined and their price was
zero. But as settlement proceeded, dwellings were improved so
that densities increased, markets emerged, boundaries shar-
pened, and entrepreneurs became involved (e.g., Duhau
2014; Goldstein 2004; Karst 1971). Although most observers
of squatter settlements have emphasized the markets in prop-
erty ownership, informal rental arrangements also became
common (Gilbert 2012). Often, neither landlords nor tenants
understand the law, and both shun the costs of litigation. As
Amis (1984) documented for Nairobi, and as many other writ-
ers have shown since, informality is no barrier to the growth of
markets, whether in land itself or tenancy (cf. Razzaz 1998).
But the pressures for formalization increase. Fringe settlements
become urban neighborhoods and, often, local governments
recognize their right to exist (e.g., Connolly 2009). In so doing
informality is eliminated.
The transitional character of suburban informality shows the
importance of an historical perspective: transitions can go
either way. Especially in the short run, what was once legal
5
may become informal, usually because new regulations make it
so. In Indonesia, as urban development and regulation encom-
passed kampungs (villages), these became “unplanned” and
problematic (Erni and Bianpoen 1980); at the fringe of Beirut,
development in Hayy el Sellom became illegal when zoning
regulations were introduced (Fawaz 2008, 573); on the Zim-
merman estate in Mathare Valley, a suburb of Nairobi, legal
ownership dissolved into uncertainty as land transfers were
made without registration (Gatabaki-Kamau and Karirah-
Gitau 2004, 164–67); in the peri-urban areas of Egyptian cities,
Soliman (2004, 188) reports similar shifts, so that housing
becomes “exformal” (cf. Sims 2010). In the long run, however,
the commonest transition is for informal settlements to
become, or through “negotiation” to be accepted as, formal
(Baross and van der Linden 1990, 8). This can take decades.
The best-documented examples are in Latin America (Bider-
man and Smolka 2012; Ward, Huerta, and Di Virgilio 2014).
Examples include Mexico City (Duhau 2014; Wigle 2010),
Cochabamba, Bolivia (Goldstein 2004), Rio de Janeiro (Hol-
ston 2008), and Caracas (Karst 1971). But this is not the only
world region where the “proper” sequence of planning–servi-
cing–construction has been reversed (Durand-Lasserve 1998,
239; cf. Baross 1990). For example, revisiting Accra’s urban
fringe after ten years, Gough and Yankson (2006) were able to
document very much the same trend.
Around Accra, Mexico City, Nairobi, and Beirut, the
growth of regulation sometimes does more than increase the
amount of informality. The encroachment of urban land uses
prompts changes in the property regime from traditional/com-
munal to Western/individualistic. Suburbs and the peri-urban
fringe are where the juxtapositions, conflicts, and compro-
mises of legal pluralism are most apparent. Many of the
best-documented examples of pluralistic informality have
been situated here (e.g., Friedmann 2011; Gough and Yank-
son 2006; Kasanga, Cochrane, and Roth 1996; Keyder 2000;
Leaf 2002, 2009, 2011; Leduka 2006; Razzaz 1994; Simon
1992, 114; 2008, 171). Around Accra, for example, much land
is still nominally held by the community and controlled by the
chiefs of indigenous estates, but a market has emerged to
allow outsiders to buy in (Gough 1999, 400). Newcomers
form associations to regulate land use, creating a form of
governance that conforms neither to custom nor to state reg-
ulation. If cities contain the greatest potential for informality,
it is in the suburbs that it may take uniquely complex forms
and pose exceptional challenges for planners.
A Southern Perspective
It is no accident that most of the research and examples men-
tioned above are in the global South. Until recently, almost all
discussions of informality in urban development focused on
cities or the urban fringe there. A recent international encyclo-
pedia of housing, for example, included surveys of informality
in Asia and Latin America, but only one marginal entry on the
issue in the global North (Berner 2012; Klaufus and Lindert
2012; Smith 2012; cf. Mukhija 2012). A few scholars have
6 Journal of Planning Literature XX(X)
noted that informality, in some sense, had once existed in the
North. Neuwirth (2006), for example, speaks of the squatters
that once occupied what became New York’s Central Park (cf.
Anders and Sedlmaier 2016; de Soto 2000), while Goff (2016)
and Jindrich (2016) have recently amplified America’s history
of informal development. Some have even noted in passing
that, as a matter of fact, informality does exist in the North,
but their focus was elsewhere (Fernandes and Varley 1998;
Fischer, McCann, and Auyero 2014; Leaf 2005, 125; Gaffikin,
Perry, and Kundu 2011, 310–15; Peattie 1995, 406; Roy 2005,
148). And so, overwhelmingly, those interested in the global
South appear to suppose, or imply, that informality is some-
thing that sets that region apart. This is apparent in the surveys
of slums and urban development that have been published since
the 1960s, none of which have found it useful to draw parallels
with the North (Acioly 2010; AlSayyad 2004; Baross and van
der Linden 1990; Davis 2006; de Soto 2000; Durand-Lasserve
1990, 1998; Fernandes and Varley 1998; Gilbert 1992; Gilbert
and Ward 1985; Huchzermeyer and Karam 2006; Lloyd 1979;
Mathey 1997; Payne 1989; Perlman 1976; Potter 1999; Pugh
1997; Rodwin 1987; United Nations - Habitat 2004; Van
Gelder 2013; van Vliet 1987). In an influential early text, for
example, Abrams (1964, 41) devotes only one page to a com-
parison of “more and less developed countries,” emphasizing
that housing problems in these regions are of a “different
order,” in part because of contrasting legal norms regarding
land ownership and regulation. A different tack was taken by
John Turner who argued that the Latin American experience of
owner building did indeed hold lessons for the developed world
(Turner and Fichter 1972; cf. Harris 2003). Turner, however,
employed neither the label nor the concept of informality as it
is understood here. In general, then, surveys and studies of the
Southern informality assumed that fundamentally different
rules applied there.
The favor has been returned. There is a massive literature on
urban development in the North. Unavoidably, many studies
discuss how builders, developers, and residents violate those
regulations, an issue I discuss later. But this is treated as a
marginal matter. Clawson’s classic account of suburban land
development in the United States makes only passing reference
to the way building inspectors can turn a “blind eye” to infrac-
tions (Clawson 1971, 105); Ben-Joseph (2005), surveying the
various regulations that shape American cities, ignores eva-
sions or violations; while Evans (2004a, 2004b), in a systematic
survey of urban real estate and planning, does not suggest that
informality is an issue.
Until very recently, few writers conceived of illegal or non-
conforming urban development in the global North as exam-
ples of informality. In modern encyclopedias, handbooks, and
readers on housing in North America and Europe, there has
been hardly any reference to the concept (e.g., Carswell
2012; Huttman and van Vliet 1998; Tighe and Mueller 2013;
van Vliet 1988). When acknowledged, illegality has usually
been understood to be geographically marginal and of local
significance (e.g., Yiftachel 2009). For example, some observ-
ers have noted its concentration in cities in Southern Europe
(Allen et al. 2004, 176; Leontidou 1990; Soares and Stüssi
1990) and in parts of what was until 1989 the eastern bloc
(Berry and McGreal 1995; Hirt 2012; Nientied 1998; Tsenkova
and French 2011, 62). In North America, the colonias settle-
ments in Texas and California that hug the Mexican border
have been labeled as a type of informal settlement, sometimes
misleadingly because many are unregulated (Larson 1995,
2002; Mukhija 2012; Mukhija and Monkkonen 2006; Ward
1999, 2004). Many observers have assumed that informality
is largely confined to this region (Larson 2002). In fact, that
is not so (Ward and Peters 2007). But, in political and eco-
nomic terms, areas such as the colonias lie outside the main-
stream, embodying the conventional view of urban informality
in the North.
Recently, however, the stereotypes and conceptual barriers
have started to come down. In the global South, more research-
ers now recognize that formal and informal developments are
interrelated. An early and influential argument along these
lines was made by Perlman (1976) with respect to Rio de
Janeiro’s favelas. It makes sense that they would often be adja-
cent or intermingled, and that illegal settlements produce
externalities that reduce the property values of the affluent
(Cavalcanti 2014; Dupont and Houssay-Holzshuch 2005,
296). Writers have also shown that informality is not confined
to low-income districts (Fischer, McCann, and Auyero 2014;
Roy 2011, 233). Indeed, it may be concentrated at both ends of
the class spectrum, albeit for different reasons. Pamuk (1996,
2000), for example, speaks about the presence of “informal
institutions” in both the poorer and the richer areas of Istanbul
and Trinidad, while Soni (2000, 76) has documented illegally
built “palatial mansions” in peri-urban Delhi. Such situations in
part reflect the weak, or corrupt, character of many state agen-
cies in the Global South, but researchers have begun to show
that informality exists within the North (Durst and Wegmann
2017). This understanding has emerged most fully in Los
Angeles, where researchers have documented backyard homes,
accessory units erected in violation of zoning, and often build-
ing regulations (Bell 2014; Cuff, Higgins, and Dahl 2010;
Mukhija 2014; Wegmann 2015). Some might see this, too, as
a local phenomenon, an effect of large-scale Hispanic migra-
tion. As the editors of a recent volume note, informality has
been assumed to be “either limited in scope . . . or criminal”
(Mukhija and Loukaitou-Sideris 2014, 3). But they, and the
contributors to their collection, argue otherwise. And so a small
but growing number of researchers have begun to deploy the
language of informality to understand other types of quasi-legal
and nonconforming urban settlements, including squatting
(Aguilera and Smart 2016), the creation of secondary suites
(Mendez and Quastel 2016; Tanasescu 2009), and the methods
by which many Americans finance their homes (Way 2010).
Finally, then, if tentatively, urban researchers are putting
into practice the injunction, best articulated by Jenny Robinson
(2002, 2005), that we should transcend continental boundaries
and learn from the global South. There is no better subject on
which to carry out this project than that of informality, the
leading aspect of urban life which is supposed to set the South
Harris
apart. The question is how best to bridge the divide. I believe
that the concept of “modes of informality” can help but,
because the identification of these modes depends on the var-
ious ways in which they arise, it is first necessary to consider
why informality exists.
Why Informality Exists
Informality commonly arises for a combination of reasons.
There are four possibilities: residents are unable or unwilling
to conform to regulations; the state may be unable or unwilling
to enforce them. In practice, two or more of these are usually in
play, and sometimes all four, at which point it becomes possi-
ble to speak about a planning regime that is defined by inform-
ality. Those who have sought to explain the prevalence of
informality have emphasized its political dynamic, focusing
on why residents might flout or why state agencies might tol-
erate—even welcome—informal arrangements (Dupont et al.
2016; Gilbert 1990; Payne 1989, 37–41; Ray 1969; Roy 2005;
Smart 1999, 2001, 32; Varley 1998; cf. Castells and Portes
1989). Their arguments challenge the naive assumption that
such practices simply reflect the inadequacy of the resources
that are available to everyone involved. But if resources are
never a sufficient explanation, they are always vital.
The obvious examples are the squatter settlements of Latin
America in the 1950s and 1960s, of Asia from the 1970s, and of
Africa and parts of eastern Europe since the 1980s. These
emerged because of the large-scale rural–urban migration of
people too poor to afford decent accommodation and where
municipalities lacked the resources to house or regulate them
(Davis 2006; Doebele 1977, 532; Hansen and Vaa 2004, 12;
Leaf 2005; Neuwirth 2006; Tsenkova and French 2011). This is
still true. In Brazil, for example, governments have cleared
some favelas, rehousing a few residents, while trying to tame
and regulate others, but to limited effect (Perlman 2010). Ren-
ters in such settlements are the poorest and least secure, in part
because landlords ignore relevant laws even when such exist
(Gilbert 2012). More recently, in China since the 1990s, infor-
mal “small property rights” housing has accommodated mil-
lions of migrants for the same reasons (Sun and Liu 2015).
Even in China, where the state has built whole new cities, there
has been a widespread lack of capacity.
But it is not just the global South that lacks resources, as the
history of building and land regulation in America demon-
strates. A tragic example of the importance of building regula-
tion was the Chicago fire of 1871, but those introduced
afterward came with “no provisions for effective enforcement”
(Rosen 1986, 107). Half a century later, a national survey noted
that building permit requirements were often ignored, espe-
cially in suburban areas, while a study of Queen’s, New York
City, in the 1930s found numerous violations (U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics 1922, 6; Comer 1942, 191). The twenty-first
century has not eliminated the problem and its accompaniment,
bribery (Listokin and Hattis 2005, 36). Everywhere, informal-
ity peaks during building booms, such as the one that preceded
the crash of 2008. Inspection staffs were stretched, while
7
developers, politicians, and home buyers rode the wave. The
result in Ireland, for example, was that officials “allowed a kind
of honor code building inspection” (Daley 2013).
Zoning and occupancy codes are also widely “negotiated,”
perhaps especially in the most regulated places. In a neolib-
eral political environment, land use regulation has become
negotiable, a practice common with “inclusionary housing”
(Selmi 2009). A currently favored method of producing
affordable housing requires developers to include a minimum
proportion of cheaper units, usually on the quid pro quo that
they may bend other rules, such as height restrictions. Such
formalized informality is paralleled by more familiar, illegal
types. In London, England, the exorbitant cost of housing has
produced a rash of “sheds with beds”: backyard structures
turned into rental units, where landlords often withhold
tenancy agreements (O’Sullivan 2012). In Los Angeles,
although only a handful have been approved, thousands of
backyard dwellings have been built (Cuff Higgins, and Dahl
2010, 7; Mukhija 2014; Wegmann 2015). In San Francisco, a
city report indicates that three-quarters of Airbnb listings are
illegal (Brinklow 2016); in New York City, Cox and Slee
(2016) have estimated that in 2015 about 21,000 housing units
were listed on Airbnb, even though state law prohibits the
rental of “entire homes.” But on this issue, as with illegal
conversions, city inspectors usually just respond to com-
plaints (Wesseler 2015). Proactive enforcement is a luxury
and systematic enforcement unknown.
On a more modest scale, my hometown, Hamilton, Ontario,
provides a full range of examples. With a population of half a
million, Hamilton is a classic “ordinary city” (Robinson 2005).
It developed as a manufacturing center, stagnated, and has
lately thrived, as it has been drawn into Toronto’s commu-
tershed (Harris Forthcoming). Historically, it had its share of
“slums,” a term which embraced a range of conditions but
which included many properties that contravened health, zon-
ing, building, and housing bylaws (Weaver 1982; cf. Ackerman
1971). Lately, although it has been growing much more slowly
than Lima in the 1950s or Shenzhen in the 2000s, the city’s
permitting and inspection staffs have been overwhelmed. In
2007, a third of new homes were started before a permit was
issued (Buist 2007). Subsequently, staffing levels fell while
construction increased, a side effect of which has been that
many locally active builders have not been registered with the
provincial organization that guarantees building standards (van
Dongen 2013; “Illegal Building . . . ” 2016). In 2014, an audit
found that although all businesses in the city were supposed to
be licensed, 684 had been overlooked, including 300 food out-
lets (van Dongen 2014). At the same time, a developer demol-
ished an historic church without getting the necessary
approvals (“A church’s new face” 2014). A year later, the city
demanded improvements from the owners of a deteriorated
high-rise building, but their efforts were ineffectual and squat-
ters soon occupied vacant units (Craggs 2015; “150
Sanford . . . ” 2015). Then it emerged that in urban fringe areas,
some businesses were claiming to be hobby farms, which pay
property tax at a low rate (Moro 2016b). This fact only surfaced
8 Journal of Planning Literature XX(X)
because one of these businesses held landscaping contracts
from the city (Moro 2016a).
These situations arose because the city lacked the resources
to ensure that its regulations were followed, itself a reflection
of taxpayer resistance. The clearest examples of incapacity,
however, concern affordable housing. Major sources of afford-
able rental accommodation in Hamilton, as elsewhere, are sec-
ondary suites in single-family homes that have been subdivided
(cf. Mendez and Quastel 2016). In 2012, city staff estimated
that 23,000 of these apartments were illegal in some way,
commonly because they contravened zoning regulations, but
sometimes because they violated fire, electrical, or health
codes (van Dongen 2012a, 2012b). Some of the worst condi-
tions exist in student housing. Recently, a dwelling with twelve
bedrooms was rented to Chinese exchange students who, ignor-
ant or heedless of the local law, paid twelve months’ rent up
front and signed no contract (Bennett 2017). City staff respond
to complaints, but these pertain to a small minority of the
properties in question. The city knows this, and recently began
a modest program of proactive enforcement, but this engages
barely 10 percent of the inspection staff. Even then, they prob-
ably catch only the most visible issues, such as the owner
builder who stored supplies in the front yard (Macrury 2015).
More importantly, strict enforcement would eliminate many
affordable units and increase homelessness. That is one reason
why tenants, as well as landlords, resisted efforts to introduce
licensing in 2012. Tenants are too poor to pay landlords for
better housing, and the city cannot house them. This is a famil-
iar situation throughout the global North. There is a large dif-
ference of degree between Lima and Hamilton and, arguably in
a country like Canada, the state could provide decent and
affordable housing for the poor. But, for familiar reasons of
politics and intergovernmental fiscal arrangements, Hamilton
cannot bridge the housing gap.
The state’s capacity is determined not only by its fiscal base
but also by its ability to act effectively. Money alone does not
make for efficient staff, including management. Coordination
of agencies is even more problematic. We often speak about the
state as if it is a single entity, but it has branches that are
organized both geographically and by responsibility. These
routinely function as silos. In Istanbul, for example, Yonder
(1987) speaks about the failures of communication between the
property registrar’s office, the municipalities, and various plan-
ning agencies. Even when a new message gets through, it can
take time for an agency, or level of government, to adjust its
practices. In Indonesia, land transactions often fail to conform
to national law (Leaf 2005, 121). In Ontario, the provincial
government has long encouraged municipalities to allow sec-
ondary suites and now compels them, but many, including
Hamilton, have retained old zoning bylaws. As a result, the
legal status of many secondary suites is uncertain. Such lags,
failures of adjustment, and ambiguities are the norm.
Everywhere, the lack of capacity may suggest that some
state regulations are too exacting. Colonial powers imported
building and land use regulations from the home country into
settings where they made no sense or were unrealistic (e.g.,
Van Gelder 2013). For example, Pamuk (2000) notes that cum-
bersome “land transfer processes,” together with guidelines
from the English Town and Country Planning Acts, were
imposed on Trinidad. Worse, many postcolonial governments
have kept them on the books. In more modest ways, the same
problem exists in the North. For example, Hamilton, like many
other Canadian cities, requires that secondary suites be a min-
imum size that is larger than that of many new condominiums
(Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation 2014). Nomin-
ally, this renders illegal many units that their current tenants
consider adequate. Then, too, the prohibition of secondary
suites in many residential areas is arguably discriminatory and
certainly unhelpful. Unfortunately, many legislators assume
that by mandating high standards, they will compel improve-
ment to happen, while, more cynically, others reckon that the
appearance of action will impress voters.
By recognizing such facts, we have moved into the politics
of calculation. There are many contexts where state agencies
turn a blind eye to violations and infractions. The clearest cases
are where irregular practices are common and widely viewed as
legitimate: the political price of taking action is understood to
be too high (Smart 1999, 104). But such calculations are always
in play to some degree. The City of Hamilton could ram
through a licensing bylaw for secondary suites, ramp up proac-
tive enforcement, and sit back while apartments are shut down
and tenants evicted, but councilors know that the fallout would
be terrible. In terms of urban development, the greatest pres-
sures come from land developers. In North America, develo-
pers have shaped both federal guidelines and municipal land
use planning, a classic case where regulation has favored the
powerful (e.g., Logan and Molotch 1987; Weiss 1987; cf.
Schneiberg and Bartley 2001). It is at least as relevant in the
global South (Gilbert 1990, 25–26; Payne 1989, 39), where the
real estate lobby in both formally and informally developed
areas is now sometimes organized in syndicates with global
financial connections (Berner 2012, 58; Cornelius 1976, 265;
Nair 2005, 175).
And then there are several reasons why one or more gov-
ernment agencies might allow squatters, builders, developers,
landlords, or other property owners to act illegally (Ren 2017).
For one, it takes the pressure off: if people house themselves, or
endure poor housing, then the state is effectively absolved of
responsibility. That is why the Venezuelan government ignored
squatting from the 1960s onward, why Tunis allowed pirate
subdividers a free hand in the 1980s, and why Indonesian cities
have lately adopted a policy of “flexible enforcement” of land
use regulations (Chabbi 1988; Monkkonen 2013; Ray 1969).
Then, too, a permissive attitude toward nonconforming settle-
ments offers governments some flexibility, notably in the pro-
vision of infrastructure. They can plausibly disclaim
responsibility for servicing districts that contravene official
plans, so that they can deal with these areas as and when they
choose (Gilbert 1990, 25). The criteria for selection are almost
bound to be political. Developers may offer bribes to get their
pirate subdivision recognized and serviced (Gilbert 1990, 25;
Smart 1999, 184). This may be surreptitious and hard to
Harris
document, as Goldstein (2004, 98) found in Cochabamba, Boli-
via, but are often blatant. At the urban fringe of Karachi in the
1980s, Hasan (1987, 23) reported that it was common knowl-
edge that developers and corrupt drug networks visibly and
“effectively employ[ed] the authorities.”
Politicians may overlook “elite informalities” or recognize
settlements whose residents are powerful (Roy 2011, 233; Soni
2000; cf. Ren 2017). They may also embrace those whose
leaders can mobilize the vote (Gilbert 1990, 28; Payne 1989,
38; Smart 2001, 32). In that fashion Mathare Valley, Nairobi,
was protected by an ambitious deputy mayor who secured votes
and built a career (Gatabaki-Kamua and Karirah-Gitau 2004,
167–69); residents of the tidal Isla de Kokomo, Manila, sup-
ported a mayor in return for catwalks between houses, sports
facilities, and preelection handouts (Laquian 1964, 115); in
Kolkata, a municipal party exercised patronage to perpetuate
its rule (Roy 2003, 141–44). The same has been documented, or
indicated for innumerable cities, including Rio de Janeiro and
Buenos Aires (Fischer 2008, 233–39; Van Gelder 2010, 261).
Given that regulations are rarely well publicized and some-
times contradictory, that residents are commonly ill-informed
and sometimes illiterate, there is ample scope for states and
developers to exploit ignorance and ambiguity. Roy (2003,
144), for example, reports that Kolkata politicians exploited
“the cacophony of land use regulations” to serve their own
ends, while Kuyucu (2014, 609) observed that both public and
private actors made use of “legal ambiguities and administra-
tive arbitrariness” to the same end. With resignation, one resi-
dent of Bangalore commented that “nobody tells us, sir, we are
illiterate and we don’t know anything” (Schenk 2001, 130).
Weak enforcement and contradictory regulations may signal
the weakness of the state, but they can be also be strategic.
In many ways, then, governments shape urban informality
(Marx 2009; Ren 2017; Roy 2005, 149).
And so state agencies and staff may try to stamp out, toler-
ate, or encourage informality. Their choice will depend in part
on the numbers, actions, political resources, and motives of
those who are violating the rules. Large numbers of peaceable
residents who offer votes for sale encourage one response;
activist opposition from a small minority another. The reverse
is also true. How residents view and use their involvement in
informal activity will depend in part on how state agencies treat
them, a fact that has long been recognized (Leeds and Leeds
1976; Rogler 1967, 520; Van Gelder 2013). This is part of a
complex, ever-changing dance of governance in which there
are few rules, written or unwritten (Leaf 2005; Roy 2005;
Smart 1999). But there are some very broad patterns, which
can usefully be understood in relation to the different modes
that informality can take.
Modes of Informal Development
The very word “informal” implies a binary contrast, while
more subtle logic recognizes a continuum. This may exist along
several dimensions: the extent to which a regulation is violated,
the seriousness of consequences, and the number of people or
9
regulations involved. Such thinking makes sense—after all,
laws define binaries, while the real world is more complex—
but are insufficient. Degrees of informality have social charac-
teristics and consequences that are discontinuous. When a tip-
ping point is crossed, a practice that once seemed deviant can
begin to appear normal and with new ramifications. The rele-
vance of these considerations to urban informality has often
been recognized. For example, many writers have suggested
that widespread informality is associated with certain forms of
governance. Sometimes they treated this in a binary, sometimes
in a more nuanced way (Leaf 2005, 116; Leeds and Leeds
1976). But missing from this conversation has been a systema-
tic consideration of the ways in which discontinuities, or
thresholds, define distinct modes of informality.
I argue that there are important discontinuities. Beyond the
first—the act of regulation itself—these arise in part from the
extent to which activities ignore or violate standards, but even
more from the manner in which informality is socially orga-
nized, whether loosely coordinated, structured, or pervasive. It
is unhelpful, indeed impossible, to establish precise criteria by
which these may be measured. We lack the evidence on which
any exact and principled argument might be based, and we can
expect that, in some contexts, the different modes will overlap
and coexist. Anyway, in practice, exact guidelines would typi-
cally be unhelpful; even local, well-informed observers find it
very difficult to determine the extent and the social organiza-
tion of informality, and so a rough and ready assessment is
usually the best they can produce. But just because we cannot
put a number on something does not mean it is unimportant.
The four discontinuities, or thresholds, define five modes:
latent, diffuse, embedded, overt, and dominant (Table 1).1
The continuum on which these sit is not purely linear. As a
result, some situations may straddle their boundaries, combin-
ing elements from two although only very rarely more. None-
theless, they are serviceable in distinguishing the most
common scenarios.
Latent Informality
The first is latent. Regulation casts a temporal shadow beyond
the issues and territory to which it pertains. A common exam-
ple pertaining to urban development in North America involves
unincorporated, unplanned suburbs, Toronto being a case in
point (Harris 1991, 1996). Here, while fringe neighborhoods
within the city were governed by building regulations and the
mandatory provision of piped water and sewers—accompanied
by higher property taxes—those who settled just beyond city
limits were free to build and live as they chose. They were well
aware of the contrast. Contemporaries deplored the results of
unregulated development: shacktowns, muddy streets, and
unhealthy living conditions. The possibility of, and arguably
the need for, regulation hovered over such areas before it
became a reality. It influenced the actions of developers,
builders, lenders, and residents, albeit in unpredictable ways:
some rushed to build precariously while they could; lenders
decline to make loans, seeing trouble ahead; others fought to
10
Table 1. Modes of Urban Informality.
Threshold Mode Social Characteristics
Latent: Varied individualistic
Geographic
Topical
Regulation introduced
Diffuse Individualistic
Coordination; concentration
Embedded Group
Organized, perhaps leaders
Overt Group
Evasion and corruption routine
Dominant Societal
forestall regulation, as Cornelius (1976, 265) has shown for
peri-urban Mexico City. Regardless, the shadow of regulation
mattered, and in a variety of ways, including a range of land
use, building, and occupancy regulations.
A shadow can also be cast within jurisdictions that are
already well governed when a new issue comes up for debate.
Such issues, and associated regulations, tend to be specific, and
so the shadow is narrowly defined (Table 1). Good examples
are rent controls or licensing. Thus, O’Sullivan (2016) reports
that the number of rentals listed in Berlin on Airbnb fell by 40
percent between February and March, 2016, ahead of a new
bylaw that largely prohibited vacation rentals. Although unre-
ported, it is likely that this threat of regulation was also deter-
ring investors who had previously been thinking about moving
into this market. Such situations have been given various
labels: Smart and Zerilli (2014) speak of them as “not-yet-
illegal”; referring to the Texan colonias Larson (1995, 140)
uses the term “extra-legal.”
Latent informality is, almost by definition, highly visible but
at the same time open to debate. In a strict sense, of course,
latency exists everywhere and on an almost limitless range of
issues; after all, there are no restraints on the character of urban
development at the poles. But in practical terms, the concept is
meaningful only in those situations where new legislation has
been, or might plausibly be, proposed. The debate has to do
with what should count as “plausible.” If, as is commonly the
case, there is agitation and discussion about the extension of
regulation, whether to new territory or to a new domain of
urban practice, then it is obvious that we can speak of latency.
Historically, the evidence for this can be found in newspaper
accounts and municipal reports. Today, in addition, there will
be buzz in social media. But if a regulation has been proposed
only by a zealous planner, and supported by a mere handful of
local residents, then we may conclude that to speak of latent
informality is premature. Only time will tell whether such a
judgment was accurate.
The passage of a new law can create informality overnight.
Castells and Portes (1989, 298) speak of this process as
“passive,” in the sense that those affected have done nothing
to earn their new status as outlaws. Often, this fact is conceded
by grandfathering; zoning regulations often recognize the
Journal of Planning Literature XX(X)
Scope Visibility Comments
Wide narrow High moderate
Narrow Low Often disguised
Broad Moderate
Broad High May attract repression
General Very high Informality normalized
legitimacy of “nonconforming” uses, thereby half-
formalizing a new informality. But a clear threshold has been
crossed (Table 1). In the whole world, there is probably no
bylaw pertaining to urban development to which every affected
person or property conforms. In that sense, informality is ubi-
quitous. It commonly flies under the radar, which makes it
difficult to measure. One reason for its invisibility to the state
is that builders and residents have every incentive to keep it that
way. Bayat (2000, 550) observes that people work hard to be
unobtrusive, and thereby “retain their gains through quiet non-
compliance without necessarily engaging in collective
resistance.” One example among many is how Indians evade
or reduce their liability for stamp duty by understating the value
of the property they have purchased (Alm, Annez, and Modi
2004). Hidden informality is also common in the North; a
property owner builds an extension or rents out her basement
without a permit; a tradesman asks for cash payment so as to
evade income tax; a resident sets up a home-based business in a
residentially zoned area. As activity becomes regulated, then, it
often goes underground where it is unobtrusive.
Diffuse Informality
What helps to keep it that way is that it is individualistic,
weakly coordinated, and geographically dispersed. At most,
the home handyman may call on the assistance of a friend or
coworker; the only obvious evidence of a basement apartment
may be a second mailbox; a tradesman works a few hours or
days at one address, and then moves on; the sign of a home
business may be nothing more than large mail deliveries, and
these days even that may be absent. Small-scale violations are
everywhere. Such diffuse informality is surely the commonest
mode and the most widespread (Table 1). Even to document, it
is difficult. For example, using a variety of sources that include
building permits, property assessment records, rental listings,
and field surveys, many North American researchers have tried
hard to document the prevalence of illegal secondary suites but
with very limited success (Harris and Kinsella 2017). To stamp
out such practices, or to render them legal by offering carrots
and sticks, would require substantial resources and intrusive
action. More affordable and therefore limited initiatives would
Harris
be arbitrary and appear unfair. And so planners and other
municipal officials often turn a blind eye. Such a strategy can
itself become almost formal; the Dutch have a word for it,
gedogen, the deliberate lack of enforcement.
Embedded Informality
A second threshold is crossed when such activities become
organized, commonly within a particular social group (Table
1). This typically includes three elements: cooperation, physi-
cal concentration, and popular legitimacy. Cooperation pro-
vides practical support encouraging more irregular activity;
on a wider range of practices, not just building unauthorized
extensions, say, but crowding in two or more families. Geo-
graphical concentration, too, is enabling, while social legiti-
macy emerges from both. These features are not perfectly
correlated, but they are closely associated because they rein-
force one another. It is easier to organize people who live close
by, while collective activity often produces clusters. Prime
examples are ethnic and (im)migrant neighborhoods. The
squatters who settled whole districts at the fringe of Latin
American cities in the 1950s and 1960s formed associations
to help one each other build homes and community services;
so, too, did the British immigrants who settled Toronto’s sub-
urbs in the early twentieth century (Lobo 1992; Harris 1996).
Less visibly, the prevalence of back houses in parts of South
Central Los Angeles reflects the cooperation of neighbors,
actively in construction and passively by refraining from regis-
tering complaints (Wegmann 2015), while the organization of
sublets by Latin Americans on Long Island in the 1990s was
helped by their segregation (Mahler 1995, 188–213). On a
more modest scale still, with help from neighbors and family
with relevant skills, property owners may undertake repairs and
renovations without seeking permits and in violation of build-
ing, health, and electrical codes. Subsequent gentrifiers will
discover evidence of such work in older homes in what had
been a working-class or immigrant neighborhood. Trust, based
on local acceptance, is often critical to the emergence of such
embedded informality, whether based on shared language, cul-
ture, class, or experience, and this is something that coresi-
dence reinforces (Ferman and Ferman 1973, 17; Portes and
Haller 2005, 407).
Overt Informality
Embedded practices are typically obvious to members of the
social group or geographical community in question, so obvi-
ous as to be taken for granted. Researchers, or just interested
observers, who have an entrée into such a community, whether
by virtue of shared language, culture, or residency, may easily
be able to identify embedded practices. So, too, should out-
siders who are able to demonstrate that they are trustworthy.
Interviews and everyday conversations may make the situation
plain. But some practices may remain invisible to the state for
years or even decades (Table 1). Modest violations of less
important regulations can be hidden, while fringe, slum, or
11
immigrant neighborhoods are sometimes terrae incognitae to
officials, politicians, and decent middle-class folks, being vis-
ited only by social explorers who bring back titillating tales.
Historically, the best-documented examples are the “slum”
neighborhoods of British and American cities (Keating
1976), but colonial cities, such as Calcutta, received a similar
treatment (Kipling 1891). Avoidance, and therefore ignorance,
remains the norm if areas are perceived to be dangerous or
deviant. But the wholesale disregard for basic zoning or build-
ing laws, as is the case in the irregular settlement of whole
neighborhoods, is another matter. It requires a correspondingly
greater degree of coordination and perhaps leadership. This
may be provided through election or, as in Villa Pagador, Boli-
via, by self-appointed persons (Goldstein 2004, 97; cf. Gilbert
and Ward 1985, 78; Lobo 1992); pirate subdivisions are
“carefully directed” by entrepreneurs (Ray 1969, 33; cf. Doe-
bele 1977). In both cases, the degree of organization may
decline as homes and community centers are built and services
installed (Mangin 1967; Van Gelder 2010). The purpose of
organization is to make settlement possible, but it may come
to include defense against officials who try to suppress it. A
longer-term goal is usually to make settlement permanent and
perhaps formalized. In this manner, clustered informality
becomes visible and hence overt.
Researchers should have no difficulty in identifying situa-
tions where large numbers of people are manifestly flouting the
law, and governments often find it difficult to ignore them. The
point at which they respond, and how, depends on many con-
siderations. These include the amount of illegal activity there
is; the level of popular tolerance or support, within and beyond
the communities in question; how powerful those communities
are, and therefore what types of political pressures are brought
to bear; how serious the consequences are, whether for those
involved or for the public at large; and what resources are
available to deal with the situation (cf. Ren 2017). But when
illegality becomes overt, another threshold is crossed: it has
become an unavoidable subject of public debate and a likely
object of government policy.
Faced with visible violations of its requirements, govern-
ments may adapt and compromise or perhaps “regularize” such
practices by offering assistance, but they often attempt to sup-
press instead. In that case, settlements of organized and clus-
tered informality in effect become “rebellious spaces” (Smart
1999, 104). If these are few in number, they can plausibly be
regarded as exceptions and dealt with accordingly, for exam-
ple, by suspending enforcement on a more or less temporary
basis. This strategy can be a sort of safety valve. A similar
approach may be adopted with respect to relatively minor,
ubiquitous practices that happen to have attracted public atten-
tion. In Hamilton, an example is the widespread existence of
illegal secondary suites, which normally fly under the radar but
which have become news in part because of their overlap with
student housing, itself a major issue in specific neighborhoods.
But, at a certain point, when substantial and overt informality
becomes widespread, suppression becomes politically impos-
sible. Fawaz (2008, 580), for example, describes how the
12
settlement of Hayy el Sellom, outside Beirut, eventually
became so large that the city simply could not evict people.
Dominant Informality
Where many such settlements grow up, they begin to shape the
mode of state governance itself. In Castells and Portes’ (1989,
298–99) terms, they create a “market for exceptional
treatment,” making corruption routine from the street level to
the back rooms of legislatures. Plenty of examples have been
documented, notably in Latin America, Africa, and parts of
Asia. Speaking of Rio de Janeiro, for example, Fischer
(2008, 233) writes that all sorts of people, from “small-time
shysters to self-made political operators to some of the city’s
wealthiest property owners and most powerful politicians,”
have profited from the manipulation of development in the
favelas. Generalizing about Africa, Hansen and Vaa (2004,
12) speak about the way informality pervades politics, the
bureaucracies, and public services. Berner (2012, 58) suggests
that in some Asian cities, informal housing has become “big
business,” organized by “syndicates” that involve local offi-
cials and police. An example is Mumbai, where Weinstein
(2008, 22) has documented an “illicit nexus” involving crimi-
nal organization, politicians, bureaucrats, and the police. Cor-
ruption pervades the system from bottom to top. In Tehran,
fines for exceeding height restrictions have become de facto
permits (Shahshahani 2005, 234). In Karachi, Hasan (2004, 69,
1987) observes that under-the-table arrangements have become
so routine that “through whom, and at what time” bribery must
happen “have also been formalized.” In Egypt, Sims (2010)
speaks about “informal Cairo triumphant.” Faced with forma-
lized informality, the line between what is legal and what is not
ceases to be blurred and becomes arbitrary and almost mean-
ingless. With respect to Indian cities, notably Kolkata, Roy
(2005, 2009) has discussed the character and implications of
this situation, with its carefully calculated lack of enforcement.
Here, clearly, informality has become dominant.
In a rough and ready way, such situations are among the
easiest to identify. The ubiquity of petty bribery, or of viola-
tions of building, zoning, and health codes, is a matter of
public knowledge or casual observation. In that context, the
absence of public discussion about such matters may be the
best clue to the fact that they are taken for granted. Larger-
scale corruption, for example of the sort that links building
contractors with politicians, can be much harder—and indeed
more dangerous—to detect. It may be only intermittent reve-
lations, of the sort that have recently surfaced in Brazil, that
can provide a glimpse of the netherworld in which dominant
informality flourishes.
Concluding Comments
The argument developed here is directed primarily at those
interested in cities of the global North, where some form of
planning is the norm. My hope is that it will encourage and help
researchers to see a myriad of often minor infractions as part of
Journal of Planning Literature XX(X)
a family of practices; an understanding of which depends upon
some acquaintance with the literature on the South. This survey
is, in part, a guide to some pertinent studies. For those inter-
ested in the South, it helps to make the case, developed by a
growing number of researchers, that that region is not a place
apart, and that concepts developed there are relevant elsewhere.
But if informal elements of urban development are not con-
fined to particular parts of the world, they are much more
common in some places than in others, they happen in different
ways, and with varying degrees of prominence, not to mention
significance. The question is how best to understand such var-
iation. The concept of “modes of informality” speaks to that
issue.2 The objective is not classification for its own sake, but
rather to help us make the comparisons that highlight common-
alities and differences across cities, thereby pointing to the
importance of those processes that bring qualitative change,
and the more useful state responses.
A key contribution of this concept is that it directs our
attention to the character and importance of the sociopolitical
thresholds that affect how planning happens. These deserve
more attention than they have received. Once regulation has
been introduced, the crossing of thresholds depends on the
numbers of people involved in informal practices, their phys-
ical location, and especially their manner of social organiza-
tion. The importance of regulation is obvious and widely
recognized, but its shadow effect on unregulated territory has
not been, while many writers still speak as though informality
can be thought of more loosely, as a conceptual umbrella. It is
worth reiterating that legislation matters along with the debates
and battles that surround it. It provides the state with a lever;
how it uses that tool is another matter.
A second threshold concerns the emergence of embedded
social legitimacy and cooperation, a development with practi-
cal significance for those involved and also, potentially, for
planning practices and wider politics. We could usefully think
more about the forms that embeddedness takes, and its precon-
ditions. A third threshold is crossed when irregular practices
are organized or even led, becoming overt, an unavoidable
matter of debate and policy. This is the least predictable step:
it depends on the prevalence and physical visibility of illegal
development, but on much else besides. Its concentration in a
ghetto may attract attention or discourage it; media reports may
trigger disproportionate response or fall on deaf ears. As we
know in many contexts, how people, and governments, respond
to news is unpredictably variable.
The final threshold occurs when informality defines the
state’s whole mode of governance, the form as well as the
practice of planning. Interesting observations have been made
about those places where that threshold has been left behind,
but less attention has been given to the mix of conditions that
nudge cities, and nations, across it. Here, discussions of urban
informality must take account of the wider literature on state
governance.
An assumption and implication of the present argument is
that informality is more than ubiquitous; it is an inevitable
context of planning, a fact of social existence. Systematic,
Harris
“modern” forms of regulation cannot be wholly reconciled to
the messy character of urban life, so that lawmakers are forever
destined to tighten and then relax their grip (Rose 1988; Val-
verde 2011). Then, too, there is the practical inability of people
to meet official expectations and of planners to enforce them.
Another strand to the present argument is that this social con-
dition is nowhere more apparent than in urban areas. It is an
unusually prominent aspect of development in cities and sub-
urbs alike, though taking different forms in each. But of course,
any experienced building inspector could have told us that.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Victoria Kelley, Michael Leaf, Alan
Smart, Jake Wegmann, and four anonymous reviewers for their com-
ments on earlier drafts.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. There are certain parallels with the forms of informal planning that
are discussed by Briassoulis (1997) who, however, speaks in purely
theoretical terms about all types of planning and does not refer to
the presence of thresholds.
2. My usage is more specific than that of Ananya Roy (2005) who has
written of informality itself as a mode of metropolitan
organization.
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Author Biography
Richard Harris is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, teaches
urban geography at McMaster University. He has written about the
history of housing, neighborhoods, and suburbs in Canada, the United
States, and British colonies. His latest book, co-edited with Charlotte
Vorms, is What’s in a Name? Talking about Urban Peripheries
(Toronto, 2017).