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2023 | Book

Informality: A Difficult Qualification Read chapter Read first chapter

Urban Informality

A Multidisciplinary Perspective

Editors: Maria Vittoria Ferroni, Rossana Galdini, Giovanni Ruocco

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This book analyzes the informal practices of contemporary cities through a close dialogue between different research perspectives, with the shared goal of giving voice to informality and evaluating its benefits and potential in a multidimensional key of social factors.

Recently, the human sciences have seen the emergence of this new term “informality,” at first sight in conflict with their function of giving order and form to social phenomena. A term with which, in this book, the authors, having as reference the Italian and European experience, specifically identify those unsatisfied social demands and those collective actions “from below” that aim at the recovery of urban space and the renewal of its organization, often not following the trajectories of legality and institutions. By means of a close dialogue between different areas of social research, this book attempts to establish the different declinations and applications of the term, evaluating the causes and effects, benefits, and potential of the phenomena attributable to it, within a multidimensional analysis that calls into question the regeneration and collective use of spaces, political-institutional confrontation and conflict, legal innovation, and social-economic benefits.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Informality: A Difficult Qualification
Abstract
In the debate that has taken place in recent years, the human sciences have seen the emergence of a new term, which was initially in conflict with its function of trying to give order and form to social phenomena: informality. It is a lemma with which we are currently trying to reunite and include all the collective behaviors that act, particularly in urban spaces, in the shadow of the legal procedures that define the relationships between citizens and institutions. These phenomena mainly represent, on the one hand, an unsatisfied or new and often innovative, social demand; on the other hand, these represent the will to activate and animate democratic collective processes from the bottom up. At the same time, these phenomena seem capable of offering a design contribution to the renewal of the social organization of space and formal institutional procedures. The objective of the volume is to develop a multifocal analysis of the theme of urban informality from sociological, political, legal, and economic profiles. In this sense, this book tries to define an initial semantic-conceptual grid of approach to the topic.
Maria Vittoria Ferroni, Giovanni Ruocco
Informality and Evolution of Urban Space
Abstract
Urban informality is at the centre of intense activity of reflection and research aimed at analyzing the causes and effects produced at global and local levels and at defining the perspectives of a phenomenon, which is now rooted in contemporary urban reality. Informal practices are considered potential factors of urban development. The possibility of generating new solutions brings attention to the value of informal practices, which arise from the community’s local needs and can, however, guide urban policies. Based on these considerations, this article proposes in the first part, an interpretation of urban informality by focusing on some emerging theoretical approaches and the complex relationship between formal and informal. The second part focuses on some possible perspectives of the informal that consider informality as a source of learning. The idea of establishing a dialogic relationship, in which the formal integrates the informal by promoting processes of interaction and reciprocal hybridization seems to indicate the right direction to orient the project of the contemporary city.
Rossana Galdini
Collective Action, Urban Spaces, and Common Goods: The Concept of Informality from a Sociological Perspective
Abstract
Informality represents the growing social dimension in which many experiences of collective action take place in our urban environments. After the collapse of political parties and political institutions in terms of legitimation and trust, citizens have begun to organize themselves in unofficial forms to answer to their needs. This chapter uses informality as an analytical category to understand phenomena such as the management of the so-called urban commons, and to provide evidence on the complexity, limits and virtues of non-institutionalized forms of collective civic action in contemporary urban landscapes.
Antonio Putini
Informality and Democratic Innovation: The Urban Political Laboratory
Abstract
“In the specific context of the city, the term ‘informality’ includes the wide range of unauthorized practices and non-standard strategies that characterize daily life and survival in many parts of the world.
Giovanni Ruocco
The Legal Value of Informality for the General Interest: The Example of Cities
Abstract
At first sight, informality and law, especially public law, appear to be two irrenconcilable concepts. And yet, in spite of the first indication there are numerous cases in which, especially in urban contexts, social phenomena and practices can engage public authorities by assuming legal significance. The essay examines them and offers a classification of these legal models. The paper concludes by explaining why all this calls for the use of the concept of the city, which is a notion only recently known to public law. 
Fabio Giglioni
The Re-use of Assets Confiscated from Organized Crime: How to Make the Informal Formal
Abstract
The purpose of this contribution is to study the potential of a particular model of informality that allows the transformation of assets resulting from illegal activities (assets confiscated from mafias) into common assets treated by the community and the public administration (particularly the Municipality) for the pursuit of the general interest. The typology which we will focus on in this contribution is that of real estate which, in addition to being part of the State’s assets, can be transferred to the Municipalities (as well as Regions and Provinces) which will decide whether to administer them directly or confer their management, through a free concession, to third sector subjects. Lastly, the aforementioned assets can be temporarily assigned directly to third sector entities by the National Agency for assets seized and confiscated from organized crime. Since the procedure leading to the final confiscation of the property has an average duration of ten years, informality in this sense is linked to the ways in which citizen groups or third-sector subjects are involved in the social reuse of the property taken away from crime to return it to the same social fabric from which it was taken.
Maria Vittoria Ferroni
The Role of “Intangible Factors” for Local Development: Policy Implications and Preliminary Indicators for Evaluation
Abstract
The objectives of this chapter are twofold: (i) to identify the key factors for interpreting the economic value of “intangible factors,” and (ii) to propose relevant indicators for improving the evaluation practices of local development programs and projects. The aim is not solely to integrate social issues into economic theory, but rather to undertake the more intricate task of assessing the economic value of the social elements within the dynamics of local development. The main conclusions can be summarized as follows: intangible factors, including informal networks, are necessary but not sufficient conditions for initiating sustainable local development processes; creativity and innovation are crucial determinants for long-term development trajectories; these determinants are “public goods,” meaning they are not naturally provided by the market but require supportive public policies.
Pierluigi Montalbano, Francesco Palumbo
Urban Regeneration and Informal City in the European Framework
Abstract
Urban regeneration and informal city are current and innovative topics of study in the European framework since they relate to the “new” relationships between citizens and public-sector decision makers in planning and implementing measures on urban spaces and in managing the eventual initiatives (Di Lascio & Giglioni in La rigenerazione di beni e spazi urbani. Contributo al diritto delle città. il Mulino, 2017).
Chiara Mari
Historicizing Urban Informality: An Opportunity to Rethink the Study of the Contemporary City
Abstract
For historians, the informal city is a particularly stimulating object of study from a theoretical and methodological perspective, mainly because it demonstrates the urgency to reformulate the very statute of urban history, which is now increasingly inclined to adopt a global perspective.
Francesco Bartolini
Informality as a Way of Living in the City: The Point of View of Urban Practices to Rethink the Categories of Urban Governance
Abstract
The theme of urban informality has received increasing attention over the years, particularly as a result of some research by urban planners and sociologists. Urban informality calls into question some categories and some approaches traditionally used with reference to urban governance. It is useful to take the point of view of urban practices. Seen from this point of view, cities are inherently informal. It is necessary to apply a capacity for discernment in the characterization of informal experiences, a discernment that must be oriented, first, to evaluate the public interest and, therefore, calls into play a central role of politics that has largely been lost in urban governance.
Carlo Cellamare
Metadata
Title
Urban Informality
Editors
Maria Vittoria Ferroni
Rossana Galdini
Giovanni Ruocco
Copyright Year
2023
Electronic ISBN
978-3-031-29827-1
Print ISBN
978-3-031-29826-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29827-1