The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization investigates the mutual relationship between the struggle for political inclusion and processes of informal urbanization in different socio-political and cultural settings.

It seeks a middle ground between two opposing perspectives on the political meaning of urban informality. The first, the ‘emancipatory perspective’, frames urban informality as a practice that fosters autonomy, entrepreneurship and social mobility. The other perspective, more critical, sees informality predominantly as a result of political exclusion, inequality, and poverty. Do we see urban informality as a fertile breeding ground for bottom-up democracy and more political participation? Or is urban informality indeed merely the result of a democratic deficit caused by governing autocratic elites and ineffective bureaucracies?

This book displays a wide variety of political practices and narratives around these positions based on narratives conceived upon specific case cities. It investigates how processes of urbanization are politicized in countries in the Global South and in transition economies.

The handbook explores 24 cities in the Global South, as well as examples from Eastern Europe and East Asia, with contributions written by a global group of scholars familiar with the cases (often local scholars working in the cities analyzed) who offer unique insight on how informal urbanization can be interpreted in different contexts. These contributions engage the extreme urban environments under scrutiny which are likely to be the new laboratories of 21st-century democracy. It is vital reading for scholars, practitioners, and activists engaged in informal urbanisation.

As a response to the shift of the centre of urbanisation from the global north to the global south, there is a need to extend the existing knowledge base. Self-made systems (equated with informal settlements) and its complex socio-economic dynamics, especially highlight this gap. In the global south, informal settlements often illustrate a distinct form of entrepreneurialism along with acting as an arrival base for many migrant workers. The theoretical exploration of informal settlements, however still has its base in Euro-American literature, remaining at best exploratory in the global south. Even with the authors hailing from the global south, the foundation of the ideas lie rooted in the urban concepts of the global north.
Locating itself at the cross between the study of socio-economic dynamics in informal settlements and the rise of the global south in urban theory, this research reviews relevant socioeconomic and political concepts or propositions and tests its implications and validity on a selected informal settlement. Dharavi in Mumbai, India forms the testing ground for the propositions, being one of the most prolific informal settlement in Asia. It is particularly known for its entrepreneurial nature along with a dense migrant community, along with its relevance to the surrounding city of Mumbai. The propositions - an ‘arrival city’, an ‘informal economic base’, a site for ‘kinetic urbanism’ are derived from Euro-American theoretical base and bear particular relevance to Dharavi and its socio-economic composition. This testing is executed through detailed spatial
analysis (based off survey data) along with field observations conducted by the author.
The exploration of the propositions reveal a multi-faceted nature of Dharavi that extends beyond the current body of urban theory. Considering the presented propositions and their validation on Dharavi and its links to Mumbai, it becomes possible for us to question and reposition the informal settlement in the current urban theory discourse.