Beyond proper political squatting
This article focuses on the illegal occupation of public buildings for residential purposes in Italy that occurs outside any explicit political framework
Category: Articles
Informal Housing of the Rich
This article investigates illegal housing for upper-income residents in the protected forest area of the eastern hills of Bogotá
Le regole dell’informalità abitativa
Il saggio indaga la peculiare pratica di occupazione informale degli alloggi pubblici a Napoli, il subentro informale
The many shades of grey in urban governance
This paper addresses the role of illegal actors and practices in urban governance in the Italian context, using urban regime theory as the theoretical frame of reference.
The production of informal space
The paper analyses the plurality of urban informal practices that characterize contemporary Italy in the sphere of housing
Juggling the formal and the informal
This paper focuses on the informal occupation of public housing in Naples, analysing a specific case of illegal access which is an alternative to ‘ordinary squatting’
Migrants, Religion and Residential Segregation
This article investigates residential segregation at the intraurban level of migrants in Rome and Milan, considering religion as a point of reference
The Dark Side of Urban Informality in the Global North
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).
Inverse Planning in the Cracks of Formal Land Use Regulation
This paper focuses on a case of ‘non-public planning’ in an informal neighbourhood of Maputo, Mozambique. Here, several residents undertook some planning duties (e.g. drawing up a detailed plan) in order to regularise their informal dwellings in lieu of the Municipality, due to its inertia. This was an attempt to …
The illicit side of urban development: Corruption and organised crime in the field of urban planning
The paper deals with issues of corruption in the planning domain. It centres on thorough analysis of the case of Desio (Milan, Italy), where a recent judicial inquiry discovered several instances of corruption related to the drafting of the local master plan, in an environment characterised by the rooted presence …