Nov 18, 2020 / InfUr Webinar 7 / Symposium Panel on “Co-production and Governance”

Symposium Panel on “Co-production and Governance”

Watch here:

Abstracts/Presenters:

Co-Production of Social Justice: Resettlement Planning in Jakarta Karina Putri, University of Melbourne

Despite gaining significant currency in the recent urban planning and urban geography literature, urban informality remains understudied.  While considerable research has explored  urban informality as the property of cities in the Global South, and  the relationship between formality and informality as hierarchical and binary (i.e. Roy, 2005; Yiftachel, 2009; Devlin, 2011; McFarlane, 2012; McFarlane and Waibel, 2012; Iveson 2019; Banks, Lombard and Mitlin, 2020),  more research is needed to examine urban informality as a marginal enterprise, a mode of production undertaken specifically by  underprivileged groups in society. This paper aims to address this gap by exploring the often-overlooked range of actors and processes involved in the creation and maintenance of urban informality. It will do so by highlighting the logic of informality beyond poverty and linking the informal practice to the contrasting modes of accumulation and survival. Using the recent resettlement case in Jakarta, Indonesia, this paper seeks to draw closer attention the role of formal, prominent, and elite actors in establishing and maintaining informal negotiation processes with the pre-relocated residents. In this context, this paper argues a state-initiated co-production of just resettlement was at play. However, the potential to engage further with and expand social justice in the resettlement processes was undermined by the involvement of actors with accumulation, instead of a survival network.  

Banks, N., Lombard, M., & Mitlin, D. (2020). Urban informality as a site of critical analysis. The Journal of Development Studies, 56(2), 223-238.

McFarlane, C., & Waibel, M. (2016). Introduction: The informal-formal divide in context. In Urban informalities (pp. 15-26). Routledge.

Yiftachel, O. (2009). Theoretical Notes OnGray Cities’: the coming of urban apartheid?. Planning theory, 8(1), 88-100.

Co-producing urban waterscapes in Brazil Alexandre da Silva Faustino, RMIT

Research on urban informality understands the  formal/informal nexus to be where distinct modes of city production and practices of power intersect.   The examination of power asymmetries is central to the political ecological analysis of the urbanization process, for which the assemblage of relations within society and  with the physical environment shapes the creation of socio-natural hybrid things as cities, water and waterscapes. The unequal and unjust contours that give shape to these processes is highlighted in hydrosocial research grounded in political ecology insights.  In this paper, I critically explore how grassroots initiatives on urban informality challenge the dominant – or formal – practices of power and seek to reconfigure urban waterscapes through co-production arrangements in Sao Paulo city, Brazil. I draw from the literature on urban informality, urban political ecology and critical geography to analyse current actions and strategies of grassroots water activists working at, with or from urban informality. The findings of the research help to  conceptualize the formal/informal nexus from a hydrosocial lens and generate possibilities for co-producing Sao Paulo’s urban waterscapes through grassroots water activism in informal settlements. The conclusions from this research address how informal urban production interplays with grassroots actions to challenge the dominant urbanization through practices of power realignment and self-organization. This paper emphasises how grassroots initiatives and the mobilization of excluded groups and communities, as the dwellers of informal settlements, are avenues for social empowerment and emancipation.

Staging Dubai: Mapping the ‘in-between’ of urban governance Michele Acuto, University of Melbourne Maryam Karimi, Politecnico di Milano

Informality has often been located as ‘outside’ of the realm of official politics. In urban studies, it has regularly been associated with practices of dwelling and partly separated from the formalized control of the state and the government. Yet, informal urbanism might be far more visceral to government that its more popular manifestations might give away. Building on a conceptualization of the “staging” (van Tatenhove et al. 2006)   of the formal-informal relation, the paper argues for a re-integration of informality as a critical part of “statecraft” (Hilbrandt, Neves Alves, and Tuvikene 2017). It does so by looking at the case of how the contemporary landscape of urban governance in Dubai has been constructed ‘in-between’ formal authority and the backstage of everyday politics, preventing contestation and circumvention. Drawing on the possibilities of this heuristic for mapping informality, it argues for an appreciation of the grey space in which informality takes place, and for opening up more systematically comparative discussions to unpack this ‘in-between’ of urban governance.

Van Tatenhove, J., Mak, J., & Liefferink, D. (2006). The inter-play between formal and informal practices. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 7(1), 8-24.

Hilbrandt, H., Alves, S. N., & Tuvikene, T. (2017). Writing across contexts: Urban informality and the state in Tallinn, Bafatá and Berlin. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 41(6), 946-961.