The Reverse of Urban Planning: First Steps for a Genealogy of Informal Urbanization in Europe

Abstract

Informal urbanization, understood as the unauthorized growth of poor housing areas, is frequently perceived as typical of cities in the global south. Against this, relying on both historical and historiographical sources, and on two case studies (Madrid and Paris), this chapter will show how informal urbanization was a central urban growth process in many of the capitals of the European continent until well into the 20th century.

The results of this analysis reveal that, from the second half of the 19th century onwards, various modes of informal urbanization emerged as a public problem, giving rise to territorial control devices by the public authorities. The development of urban regulations, and especially the “birth” of urban planning, led to a progressive outlawing of the urban growth processes considered “undesirable”. Nevertheless, informal urban development processes illegally re-emerged through the continent, evolving to adapt to and evade control.

The widespread transgression of urban regulations makes it unlikely that the development of urban planning was responsible for the virtual disappearance of the phenomenon in Europe. The enforcement of the center-periphery economic global dynamics could be the key to explaining the decline of “informal urbanization” in northern Europe and their expansion in global south cities.