Noel Manzano

I’m currently a post-doc researcher at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain) and at the École d’Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (France). I am interested in “informal” processes, squatting, self-management, segregation, urban planning history and state theory. I studied architecture, sociology, and urban history, and I try to combine these different perspectives in urban analysis. I have worked mainly in the working-class peripheries’ sociology and history. My PhD dissertation investigated the 20th century history of informal urbanization in Europe. Through this project, I have uncovered accounts about the massive existence of “informal” areas in most of the European cities until the second half of the century, challenging current perspectives about “northern” urbanism. I am currently working on a new project, comparing the development of informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon between the 1960s and 2000s.

Recent Publications
1. Manzano N. (2021), The reverse of urban planning: informal city and defective urban growth in XX Century Europe. In Max Welch Guerra Contributions to a Pan-European History of Urban Planning in the Twentieth Century (accepted).

2. Manzano N., Castrillo M. (2019), From chabolas to invisible squats. A reflection on the residential informality evolution in Madrid. In Smagacz-Poziemska M., Gomez M.V., Pereira P., Guarino L., Kurtenbach S., Villal J.J., Inequality and Uncertainty, Current Challenges of Cities. Palgrave Macmillan.

3. Bogado D., Manzano N., Solanas M. (2019), Squatting as Claiming to the Right to the City. In Degirmenci E., Morales I. and Venturini F., Social Ecology and the Right to the City: Towards Ecological and Democratic Cities. Black Rose Books. Montreal, Chicago and London.