Towards a multi-scalar reading of informality in Delft, South Africa: Weaving the ‘everyday’ with wider structural tracings

Cirolia, L. R., & Scheba, S. (2018). Towards a multi-scalar reading of informality in Delft, South Africa: Weaving the “everyday” with wider structural tracings. Urban Studies, 56(3), 594–611. doi:10.1177/0042098017753326

Platform
Cape Town
Publication type
Scientific article (peer-reviewed)
DOI Title
Towards a multi-scalar reading of informality in Delft, South Africa: Weaving the ‘everyday’ with wider structural tracings
Journal
Urban Studies
ISSN/ISBN
0042-0980 1360-063X
DOI
10.1177/0042098017753326
Author(s)
Liza Rose Cirolia Suraya Scheba
Published year
Tags
built environment everyday urbanism Housing Informality methods South Africa urbanisation developing countries

 

External link

Abstract

Informality is a critical theme in urban studies. In recent years, ‘the everyday’ has become a focus of studies on informality in African cities. These studies focus on particularity and place. They offer a useful corrective to top-down and universalising readings which exclude the daily experiences and practices of people from analysis. As we show in this article, everyday studies surface valuable insights, highlighting the agency and precarity which operates at the street level. However, a fuller understanding of informality’s (re)production requires drawing together particularist accounts with wider and more structural tracings. These tracings offer insights into the ways in which state and financial processes influence and interface with the everyday. In this article, we use the case of housing in Delft, a township in Cape Town, to demonstrate this approach and argue for a multi-scalar and relational reading of the production of informality.

 

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