Becoming a Slum: From Municipal Colony to Illegal Settlement in Liberalization‐Era Mumbai

This article argues that the transformation of a Mumbai neighborhood from municipal housing colony into illegal slum has been facilitated by the politically mediated deterioration and criminalization of its water infrastructure in the context of liberalization‐era policy shifts. These policy shifts hinge upon a conceptual binary that posits the unplanned, illegal and informal ‘slum’ as the self‐evident conceptual counterpoint to a planned, formal, ‘world‐class’ city. The story of Shivajinagar‐Bainganwadi problematizes this assumption by evidencing the deeply political and highly unstable nature of this binary — and thus insists upon an account of the shifting political and economic stakes imbued in these categories. The case of Shivajinagar‐Bainganwadi reveals that the neighborhood's emergence as an illegal slum has been mediated by the liberalization‐era politics that have come to infuse the neighborhood's water pipes — dynamics that have produced the illegality/informality of the neighborhood as a discursive effect.     

Collective bargaining and new work regimes: ‘too important to be left to bosses’

The formal negotiations process remains perhaps the least‐studied moment of collective bargaining. Drawing on ideal types of ‘distributive’ and ‘integrative’ bargaining and the ‘formal/informal’ distinction, this article reports non‐participant observation and ethnographic research into the negotiations process that enabled a change agreement in a British multinational, hereafter anonymised as FMCG. Informal bargaining relations provided the backdrop to—and emerged within—the formal negotiations process. Formal bargaining established new employment contracts based on a simplified internal labour market and generated the joint governance processes to enable and regulate the change process. Neither management nor union strategy was wholly derived from rational, interest‐based positions. The negotiations process was essential to strategy formation and to the emergence of sufficient ‘integrative’ bargaining for all parties to devise and approve new processual institutions and norms to deliver a more flexible labour process and to restore the long‐run viability for ‘distributive’ bargaining.     

The Engineer and The Plumber: Mediating Mumbai's Conflicting Infrastructural Imaginaries

Two decades ago, the rules governing the provision of piped municipal water supply in Mumbai became linked to the policy frameworks governing eligibility for a property titling scheme. This article outlines the ideological basis and practical implications of the shift, as well as the contradictions of the new regulatory regime. The article demonstrates how these contradictions have been mediated by the material and practical knowledge, embodied expertise, local authority and wide‐ranging socio‐political work of two sets of actors: municipal water engineers and a cast of characters known locally as ‘plumbers’. The social, political and hydraulic imaginaries animating the work of ‘plumbing’ are bound up with a temporal and spatial imaginary distinctly at odds with the network‐flow conception of hydraulic engineering within which the work of water supply planning and distribution in Mumbai is conceptualized, materialized and institutionalized. The hydraulic and legal contradictions of these clashing infrastructural idioms––of flow and event––have rendered the regulatory framework highly unstable. These contradictions eventually erupted in Mumbai's waterscape, leaving the city's water infrastructures suspended in a highly politicized state of limbo between dueling infrastructural imaginaries.     

The Dark Side of Urban Informality in the Global North: Housing Illegality and Organized Crime in Northern Italy

This article deals with housing illegality/informality in Italy, where it represents an established aspect of urban development. It presents a case study focused on Desio, a town close to Milan in northern Italy. Here housing illegality occurs by virtue of the well‐established presence of a mafia‐type criminal organization (the ‘Ndrangheta). Three examples of illegal construction in Desio are analysed, forming the basis for a discussion on the distinctive features of illegal house‐building in Italy. In particular, institutional incentives encouraging illegal housing are investigated, with reference to both formal institutions (e.g. planning laws, rules preventing unauthorized housing and building amnesties) and informal institutions (e.g. organized crime). The case of illegal housing in Italy contributes significantly to the wider international debate on urban informality, highlighting the critical need for research along avenues as yet only partially explored (e.g. informal housing in Western countries and the role of criminal activities and actors in the spread of informality) and challenging some common assumptions such as the geographical dualism (‘global North’ versus ‘global South’) which, implicitly, results from the international literature.     

Strengthening Access to Land for Housing for the Poor in Maputo,Mozambique

Informal, or illegal, occupation of land is growing in importance in the cities of the developing world, especially sub‐Saharan Africa. The widespread nature of ‘illegality’ in some situations has led to queries of whether this should be termed ‘illegal’, and this is particularly so where there are potentially different entities bestowing legality. It has been increasingly recognized that informal land development is a solution for access to land by the urban poor, where formal supply is inadequate and inflexible, but that there need to be more efficient relationships between the formal and informal sectors. It is thus argued that new forms of association and new forms of partnership across the formal boundary are required. This article looks at the situation of land access for housing in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, with a focus on the poor majority, and suggests alternative mechanisms for urban land rights to the simplistic application of full freehold tenure in formal land markets. These alternative mechanisms are based on structures within civil society, as it is argued that where the state and market are weak, as in Mozambique, these are more appropriate and less alienating for the urban poor majority. L'occupation irrégulière, voire illégale, des terrains s'accroît dans les villes des pays en développement, notamment en Afrique sub‐saharienne. Le caractère répandu de ‘l'illégalité’ dans certaines situations a conduit à s'interroger sur la pertinence du terme ‘illégal’, en particulier quand différentes entités sont susceptibles d'accorder la légalité. De plus en plus souvent, il est reconnu que l'aménagement non‐officiel du sol est une solution permettant aux citadins pauvres d'accéder à la terre (lorsque l'offre officielle n'est ni suffisante ni souple), mais que les relations entre les secteurs officiels et non‐officiels doiventÀtre plus performantes. L'article affirme qu'il faut créer de nouvelles formes d'association et de partenariat dépassant le cadre officiel. Il observe la situation de l'accès foncier pour le logement à Maputo, capitale du Mozambique, en considérant la majorité pauvre, et suggère d'autres mécanismes pour les droits fonciers urbains jusqu'à la demande toute simple de la pleine propriété sur des marchés fonciers officiels. Ces mécanismes de substitution sont basés sur des structures appartenant à la société civile, car lorsque l'État et le marché sont faibles, comme au Mozambique, ces mécanismes sont plus appropriés et moins aliénants pour la majorité urbaine pauvre.     

Mumbai’s Mysterious Middle Class

Mumbai forms the décor to an interesting set of relationships among economic liberalization, globalization, class restructuring and an unprecedented housing construction boom. The much talked about new Indian middle class is primarily an urban phenomenon and seems nowhere more salient than in India’s commercial capital and largest city. This article seeks to undo some of the mysteries that surround the new middle class: how it can be empirically defined, whether and how it is growing, how class restructuring in Mumbai conforms (or not) to Western arguments about social polarization, and how any such class restructuring can best be explained. The empirical analysis employs existing data from various sources on income and consumption in Mumbai (and India at large) and reports on selected findings from a recent survey by the author on housing, class and upward mobility among households in newly constructed homes in Greater Mumbai. Data on the distribution of household incomes show that the upper‐middle income classes have grown relative to the total, that the lower‐middle income classes have shrunk, and that the ranks of the poor have expanded slightly. Survey data among new home buyers in Mumbai suggest little upward mobility. Discourse about the ‘new middle class’ tends to focus on consumption rather than income and additional findings indicate that much of the growth in consumption is credit‐based.     

Urban Fortunes and Skeleton Cityscapes: Real Estate and Late Urbanization in Kigali and Addis Ababa

In many parts of Africa, societies that remain primarily rural are experiencing accelerated urban growth and highly visible booms in property development. In the absence of significant industrialization, investment is pouring directly into what Lefebvre and Harvey characterized as the ‘secondary circuit’ of capital. Debates about the drivers of investment in real estate are longstanding in relation to the global North, but have given little consideration to low‐income and late‐urbanizing countries in Africa. Yet such contexts offer important opportunities to reflect on existing theory. Focusing on Kigali and Addis Ababa (both transformed virtually beyond recognition over the past two decades), this article explores the drivers and consequences of investment in urban real estate in countries striving to structurally transform their economies. It argues that a range of formal and informal incentives and constraints have led to high‐end real estate being viewed as the ‘safest bet’ for those with resources to invest, even where demand is limited and governments are promoting other kinds of investment. While some people are reaping urban fortunes in largely untaxed rents, much of the construction is purely speculative, creating landscapes of unused and underused high‐end properties in contexts where investment is desperately needed elsewhere.     

‘One‐Man Handled’: Fragmented Power and Political Entrepreneurship in Globalizing Mumbai

This article considers the fractured nature of state power in contemporary Mumbai. Based on a case study of the ongoing Dharavi Redevelopment Project, a 2‐billion US dollar initiative to redevelop Mumbai's most infamous ‘slum’ settlement as a mixed‐use, mixed‐income township, it details the new state strategies emerging to support urban development efforts in India today. Identifying the structural weaknesses that have traditionally hindered development planning in Mumbai, it describes how a private developer, acting as a political entrepreneur, has worked to consolidate the authority and resources necessary to overcome these institutional gaps and structural weaknesses. Situating the analysis in theories of state restructuring, this case sheds light on how the local Indian state is responding to the pressures associated with neoliberal globalization and competitive urbanism. While a growing literature in this area has offered important insights into emerging configurations of power, it remains overly focused on the role of NGOs in these efforts, failing to provide an adequate analysis of alliances between the state and other private actors. This article attempts to address this gap with an in‐depth examination of the political entrepreneur as a site of institutionalized, but ultimately incomplete, power in globalizing Mumbai.     

Community Leadership and the Construction of Political Legitimacy: Unpacking Bourdieu's ‘Political Capital’ in Post‐Apartheid Johannesburg

Apart from local monographs and normative texts on community participation, research on community leadership constitutes a blind spot in urban leadership, urban politics, social movements and urban studies. This article, based on case studies in post‐apartheid Johannesburg, contributes to theorizing community leadership, or informal local political leadership, by exploring Bourdieu's concepts of ‘political capital’ and ‘double dealings’. Considering community leaders as brokers between local residents and various institutions (in South Africa, the state and the party), we examine how leaders construct their political legitimacy, both towards ‘the bottom’ (building and maintaining their constituencies), and towards ‘the top’ (seeking and sustaining recognition from fractions of the party and the state). These legitimation processes are often in tension, pulling community leaders in contradictory directions, usefully understood under Bourdieu's concept of ‘double dealings’. Community leaders are required, more than formally elected political leaders, to constantly reassert their legitimacy in multiple local public arenas due to the informal nature of their mandate and the high level of political competition between them — with destructive consequences for local polity but also the potential for increased accountability to their followers. We finally reflect on the relevance of this theoretical framework, inspired by Bourdieu, beyond South African urban politics.     

Paying for Pipes,Claiming Citizenship: Political Agency and Water Reforms at the Urban Periphery

This article interrogates the nature of political agency deployed at sites of market‐oriented water reforms. It presents a case study from Bangalore, India of a water project mandating significant ‘beneficiary’ cash contributions from lower‐middle‐class dwellers for the capital cost of extending piped water to the city's peripheries. Drawing on quantitative and ethnographic data, it illustrates why property owners who lack formal water access and land tenure — groups referred to in this article as the ‘peripheralized middle class’ — consent to paying for pipes rather than resist all together despite the high cost involved. It argues that far from reflecting an internalization of a ‘willingness to pay’ or ‘stakeholder’ ethos celebrated by development practitioners today, payment for water provides an insurgent means to bargain for greater symbolic recognition, respectability and material benefits from the state. In particular, payment for pipes enables peripheral dwellers to strengthen their claims to secure land tenure in an era of exclusionary and punitive spatial policies. Payment thus comprises a terrain of contested meaning making and political struggle, at the heart of which lie the stakes of urban citizenship. In documenting the process by which property related interests and tenure claims are advanced under a scenario of reforms, this article contributes to Gramscian political‐ecological conversations on subaltern political agency and the lived character of hegemony in urban environments.     

Sovereignty Beyond the State: Exception and Informality in a Western European City

Bridging debates on urban sovereignty and urban informality, this paper argues that relationships between sovereignty and informality may not reside exclusively in the way the sovereign state decides to allow or forbid informality, but also in the way sovereignty is distributed among a range of state and non‐state actors. Drawing upon fieldwork on the early‐2010s management of displaced Romanian Romani families in two emergency camps in the city of Montreuil (France), the paper shows how the NGO responsible for managing one camp acted as sovereign power, allowing a number of informal activities to thrive within its confines. By contrast, inside the other camp, managed by another NGO that resolutely implemented state directives, only formal activities took place. Building on Dean's (2010) concept of ‘disaggregated sovereignty’, the paper mobilizes this disjuncture as a case for critically examining how the ‘state of exception’ takes shape beyond the state's grip. A subtext running throughout is the parallel between the very first camps for civilians in nineteenth‐century colonized territories and these twenty‐first‐century camps for Roma in Europe—both elicited a state of exception partially predicated on camp dwellers’ perceived ethnic/racial homogeneity.     

State Theory from the Street Altar: The Muscles,the Saint and the Amparo

This article identifies traces of the state in three urban neighborhoods of Mexico City. Instead of asking what is the state, where is it located or what does it do, the question posed here is: what are the effects of state practices at the street level? By ethnographically and visually describing how protection is performed, the article argues that the state is not only ‘somewhere’ in specific functions, actors or institutions; it also manifests materialized effects produced by a web of conflict‐ridden relations. Discussion about the state in the global South generally revolves around its failures and informality. The proposal here is that, by analyzing the state from the standpoint of urban space, the focus is on how protection is performed and by means of which operations, relations, objects and actors—not whether the state works or not, or whether actors are formal or informal. Based on ongoing ethnographic work and a collaboration with two visual artists in Mexico City, the article analyzes three protective processes: the ‘muscles’ (involving actors including police officers, gang leaders, fathers and husbands), the ‘saint’ (involving caring for representations of various saints and participation in other clientelistic chains of fidelity) and the ‘amparo’ (a form of application of the rule of law in a personalized manner for the redress of interpersonal conflicts). These are three sets of practices that have been embedded in Mexico's history of state formation since the days of colonization.     

The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco,Mexico City

This article details the evolving social and spatial dynamics of a planning approach that is now being used to regulate irregular or informal settlements in the conservation zone of Xochimilco in the Federal District of Mexico City. As part of the elaboration of ‘normative’ planning policies and practices, this approach counts, maps and then classifies irregular settlements into different categories with distinct land‐use regularization possibilities. These spatial calculations establish a continuum of ‘gray’ spaces, placing many settlements in a kind of planning limbo on so‐called ‘green’ conservation land. The research suggests that these spatial calculations are now an important part of enacting land‐use planning and presenting a useful ‘technical’ veneer through which the state negotiates competing claims to space. Based on a case study of an irregular settlement, the article examines how the state is implicated in the production and regulation of irregularity as part of a larger strategy of spatial governance. The research explores how planning ‘knowledges’ and ‘techniques’ help to create fragmented but ‘governable’ spaces that force communities to compete for land‐use regularization. The analysis raises questions about the conception of informality as something that, among other things, simply takes place outside of the formal planning system.     

City Children and Genderfied Neighbourhoods: The New Generation as Urban Regeneration Strategy

Former industrial cities in the West are employing gentrification as urban policy. In these policies, women and families currently play an important role as gentrification pioneers. In my analysis of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, I propose the term genderfication to understand the gender dimensions of this process. Genderfication refers to the production of space for different gender relations. I analyse Rotterdam's urban planning program for becoming a ‘child‐friendly city’, which entails replacing existing urban dwellings with new, larger and more expensive ‘family‐friendly homes’ as a strategy for urban re‐generation. Urban re‐generation supplements regeneration in the form of material and economic restructuring, and refers to the replacement of part of the current population by a new and better suited generation. The ‘child‐friendly city program’ is considered in tandem with punitive ‘youth policies’.     

Cities within the City: Do‐It‐Yourself Urbanism and the Right to the City

In many cities around the world we are presently witnessing the growth of, and interest in, a range of micro‐spatial urban practices that are reshaping urban spaces. These practices include actions such as: guerrilla and community gardening; housing and retail cooperatives; flash mobbing and other shock tactics; social economies and bartering schemes; ‘empty spaces’ movements to occupy abandoned buildings for a range of purposes; subcultural practices like graffiti/street art, skateboarding and parkour; and more. This article asks: to what extent do such practices constitute a new form of urban politics that might give birth to a more just and democratic city? In answering this question, the article considers these so‐called ‘do‐it‐yourself urbanisms’ from the perspective of the ‘right to the city’. After critically assessing that concept, the article argues that in order for do‐it‐yourself urbanist practices to generate a wider politics of the city through the appropriation of urban space, they also need to assert new forms of authority in the city based on the equality of urban inhabitants. This claim is illustrated through an analysis of the do‐it‐yourself practices of Sydney‐based activist collective BUGA UP and the New York and Madrid Street Advertising Takeovers.     

Trade unions,collective bargaining and macroeconomic performance: a review

Coordination through collective bargaining is recognised as an influential determinant of labour market outcomes and macroeconomic performance. This article provides a systematic review of the empirical literature on the subject. What emerges from the review is that it is different types and coverage of bargaining coordination, rather than cross‐country variation in trade union density, that matter for economic performance. High levels of bargaining coverage tend to be associated with relatively poor economic performance, but this adverse relationship can be at least mitigated by high levels of bargaining coordination. In the absence of formal bargaining arrangements, economies often develop informal bargaining mechanisms whose effects are similar to those arising from formal bargaining provided they both operate at similar levels of coordination. The consequences of labour market coordination or absence thereof depend on the monetary policy regime as non‐accommodating monetary policy can eliminate some of the adverse unemployment consequences otherwise associated with industry‐level collective bargaining. Finally, bargaining coordination seems to matter most in times of rapid economic change rather than under more stable conditions. Overall, we conclude that it is the total ‘package’ of (formal and informal) labour market institutions that matters for the performance of the economy rather than unionisation as such or individual aspects of unionism.     

The success and failure of policy-implanted inter-firm network initiatives: motivations,processes and structure

This paper examines the processes and causes of inter-firm network success and failure, defined in terms of the ability of networks to become a sustained and valued form of business activity for their members. The paper examines four different case study network initiatives: (1) a failed informal ‘new entrepreneurs' network’ (2) a successful informal ‘local cluster group’ (3) a failed formal ‘defence contractors' network’ and (4) a successful formal ‘small-firm technology group’. It is shown that networks in business are often consciously developed and maintained by those managing directors who have recognized the importance of cooperative activities for achieving competitive advantage for their companies. The best network support consisted of brokers who are able to mix and overlap the ‘hard’ business and ‘softer’ social interests of participants. The case studies indicate that it is formal groups that are the most potent form of inter-firm network, but that it is through an initially informal structure that they are best facilitated. It is concluded that both economic and social rationalities are at play in the motivation of firms to join networks, and that their success is closely connected to pre-existing commonality between members.     

Resilient Growth: Fantasy Plans and Unplanned Developments in India's Flood‐Prone Coastal Cities

Academic and policy literatures on urban climate resilience tend to emphasize ‘good planning’ as the primary means for addressing the growing risk of flooding in Asia's coastal megacities. Cities have come to rely on disaster and climate resilience plans to future‐proof their landscapes and protect vulnerable populations. Yet while data is collected, models are built and plans are drafted, environmentally destructive development practices continue unabated and often unchallenged. This article examines and seeks to explain the contradictions between a growing awareness of the risks of climate‐induced flooding in resilience plans and the continuation of development practices widely acknowledged to exacerbate those risks. It analyzes these contradictions in the context of Mumbai and Kolkata, India's largest coastal cities, which are facing the severest threats from climate‐induced flooding. Based on analyses of key resilience planning documents and both planned and unplanned developments in some of Mumbai's and Kolkata's most ecologically sensitive areas, our analysis reveals that resilience planning, promoted by the central government and international consultants, and presented in locally produced ‘fantasy plans’, fails to address the risks of climate‐change‐related flooding owing to tendencies to sidestep questions of politics, power and the distributional conflicts that shape urban development. We conclude that efforts to reduce urban flood risk would benefit from the research, methods and analytic concepts used to critically study cities, but significant gaps remain between these fields.     

Financialization,Urban Governance and the Planning System: Utilizing ‘Development Viability’ as a Policy Narrative for the Liberalization of Ireland's Post‐Crash Planning System

Drawing upon the Irish case, this article explores the interaction between the financialized economy and the urban planning system. While considerable scholarship has examined the financialization of real estate, it remains unclear how planning systems are being repurposed to facilitate a finance‐led regime of urban growth or how the ‘real estate–financial complex’ seeks to enact planning policy transformations that support its interests. This article explores how such actors have advanced the concept of ‘financial viability of development’ as a means of influencing the post‐crisis re‐regulation of Irish planning policy. This group has argued that housing construction in post‐crash Ireland is unviable given the high development finance costs, onerous planning gain contributions and the lack of development certainty in the planning process. As such, housing construction has been at an all‐time‐low, leading to a new crisis in affordable housing provision. In response, a complicit state has further liberalized the planning system, introducing an array of policies that are evermore facilitative of development interests. Empirical findings, based on interviews with developers, lobbyists and planners, emphasize the importance of informal access to policymakers, the wielding of ‘expert knowledge’ and media management to co‐opt the state into adopting financial viability within planning policymaking.     

Cooperative Islands in Capitalist Waters: Limited‐equity Housing Cooperatives,Urban Renewal and Gentrification

Improving the habitat of residents in central‐city neighbourhoods without simultaneously gentrifying these is becoming a pressing dilemma in right‐to‐housing and right‐to‐the‐city agendas, both in the global North and the global South. This article explores what possibilities limited‐equity housing cooperativism can bring to the table. Insights are drawn from two urban ‘renewal’ processes in which limited‐equity housing cooperatives have played an important role: in Vesterbro (Copenhagen) and Ciudad Vieja (Montevideo). The article analyses the everyday politics within and around these cooperatives through a broader institutional and political‐economy lens. This approach sheds light on mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that operate within these cooperatives, as well as on the processes through which they have been directly and indirectly implicated in the displacement of low‐income neighbours. Despite providing a grassroots housing alternative for local ‘non‐owners’, individual cooperatives participate in, and are vulnerable to, urban transformations that traverse multiple scales. They are inserted, moreover, within wide‐ranging unequal social structures that the cooperative's formal equality has limited tools to offset. The ways in which cooperatives interlink as a sector and how this sector relates to the state are two key dimensions to be considered in challenging capitalist‐space economies.