Frank Müller
The Global City and its Other
Decentering Urban Informality in and from Mexico City
(Fragmentierte Moderne in Lateinamerika, 17)
355 Seiten, 28,– €, ISBN 978-3-938944-88-2
(December 2014)
How does informality matter
in urban planning? This book examines how the concept, stemming from (urban)
development discourse, has entered into the everyday language of a broad
variety of urban actors in Mexico City. Informality reproduces a form of
internal colonialism, translating a global discourse of “othering” into
multiple micro-spatial relations between real estate developers, public
planners, inhabitants and neighborhood organizations. The usual, normatively
disparaging construction of informality as a practice of the urban poor is
misleading and continues to marginalize communities from access to urban
planning. Yet, informality matters also as an alliance-forging signifier in
emancipatory struggles for housing and land.
Following recent tendencies to decenter urban studies, this perspective on urbanity allows for understanding cities not as territorial units but as conflictive configurations of planning logics and cohabitation. This theoretical contribution is made on the basis of empirical research in two areas: the Historic Center and the western peripheries of Mexico City.
Review: http://pw-portal.de/rezension/38520-the-global-city-and-its-other-46911