New precarious settlements, informality-formality continuum and the housing access question in Europe
Final Report Abstract
The described research documents how the decentralised and sometimes hardly noticeable practices of ordinary people become a stable feature and relevant force in co-producing the local housing realities in affluent European cities. By juxtaposing contested, successful, and 'under-the-radar' ordinary housing phenomena, the research unpacked this influence and documented the embeddedness of informality in high-income European cities. This investigation shows the pervasive and hybrid nature of local housing markets. These findings are manifested in several ways. Firstly the documentation of incremental backyard extensions in London metropolis shows that formal/informal morphologies and processes (including neighbourhood negotiations) are extremely common and occur across all levels of income. They lead to the densification of the metropolis through completely decentralised processes driven by individual housing owners. Secondly, the investigation of the increasingly popular phenomenon of boat dwellings shows shifting boundaries of what can be considered a legitimate form of habitation in contemporary housing markets. However, this process is shaped not only by the public sector's decisions and market pressures but also by a set of diverse strategies that boat dwellers effectively take to stay put, including formalisation, adhoc advocacy, dis-compliance and staying under the radar. Lastly, the research documents the widespread presence and historical continuity of precarious make-shift settlements in the Paris metropolis. Although many of those settlements are short-lived and were eradicated by the public sector at many points in history, they persist as a movable and hidden phenomenon redefining the meaning of idle spaces as an opportunity for shelter development of extremely marginalised groups.
Publications
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Transcending path dependencies: Why the study of post-socialist cities needs to capitalise on the discussion on urbanisation in the South (and vice versa). Urban Studies, 59(12), 2411-2430.
Galuszka, Jakub
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Incremental housing extensions and formal-informal hybridity in London, United Kingdom. Questioning the formal housing imaginaries in the ‘North’. Habitat International, 130, 102692.
Galuszka, Jakub & Wilk-Pham, Anna
