Both urban land markets and property development are heavily regulated in the global South. However, private property, land use, and development regulations are commonly contravened in both 'slums,' substandard tenement buildings and middle-class and elite localities. In India, decades of builder and landlord driven unauthorized development, and the informal settlements that accompany it, impede urban and regional planning, infrastructure development, state revenues, urban liveability and the rationalization of land records, property rights and tenure relations. This ‘informal urbanization’ (IU) includes both informal settlements ('slums', squatter settlements or ‘encroachments’ that are illegal and those that developed outside, rather than in contravention of, state regulation and intervention, which are thus non-formal) and unauthorized developments (developer or builder led projects that violate land-use laws and/or development codes). While much is known about the accumulation and regulation of capital through the formal economy, much less is known about these in the informal economy, and very little is known about how these processes work within IU. This is largely due to contemporary wisdom, influenced by de Soto's work, that the lack of formal property rights leads to 'dead capital', i.e. capital that cannot accumulate.This knowledge gap is problematic because if IU is a significant circuit of accumulation for local capital, then policies, plans, and projects for sustainable and inclusive development (all of which require land and plot reconstitution, raise ownership and usufruct issues and shed light on information deficits and malpractices) range from inadequacy to lack of fitness for purpose. Further, the difficulty municipalities face when it comes to providing serviced and serviceable urban land is normally attributed to financial constraints, institutional weakness or staff capacity. The role accumulation through IU plays has not been specifically analyzed. This is problematic because if capital is accumulated through IU (particularly if it is reinvested in it) then this circuit becomes crucial for understanding both what reproduces and expands IU beyond effective demand and the poor's ‘self-help’ housing. URBAN INFORMALITY addresses these issues through a geographical political economy framework that relates debates on urban informality and endogenous property relations to David Harvey's work on the urbanization of capital. The overall research question is: how and to what extent is capital forming and accumulating through informal urbanization, and what does this mean for how we understand and address urban development?
URBAN INFORMALITY's aims are to (1) synthesize the theory and evidence of capital accumulation via IU and its consequences for urban governance and inclusive development more generally (2) qualitatively study and record the phenomena in six localities (3) interpret the data via cross-case and rival theory analysis, and (4) disseminate findings through journal articles, policy briefs, roundtables and seminars with respondents, and guest lectures for faculty and students.
The academic goal is to produce knowledge on how and to what extent capital accumulates via IU, the actors and the social structures of accumulation that link them and the interests and norms that coordinate their activities.
Practically speaking, this research will be relevant for those designing and implementing interventions targeting urban sustainability, inclusivity and/or governance.
Conclusions:
Capital is forming and accumulating via informal urbanization through both extra-economic and economic processes.
Significant amounts of land value are being appropriated extralegally.
Residents and local political and economic elites have vested interests in the continuation of informal urbanization.
Insecure or politically flexible property rights limit citizens' ability to exit adverse political or residential situations.
