The turn of the century has been a moment of rapid urbanization. Much of this urban growth is taking place in the cities of the developing world and much of it in informal settlements. This book presents cutting-edge research from various world regions to demonstrate how these trends make new forms of social and political power possible.

The turn of the century has been a moment of rapid urbanization. Much of this urban growth is taking place in the cities of the developing world and much of it in informal settlements. This book presents cutting-edge research from various world regions to demonstrate these trends. The contributions reveal that informal housing is no longer the domain of the urban poor; rather it is a significant zone of transactions for the middle-class and even transnational elites. Indeed, the book presents a rich view of 'urban informality' as a system of regulations and norms that governs the use of space and makes possible new forms of social and political power. The book is organized as a 'transnational' endeavor. It brings together three regional domains of research—the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia—that are rarely in conversation with one another. It also unsettles the hierarchy of development and underdevelopment by looking at some First World processes of informality through a Third World research lens.

Chapter 1 Urban Informality: Crossing Borders
Chapter 2 Urban Informality as a New Way of Life
Chapter 3 Liberalization, Globalization, and Urban Informality
Chapter 4 Love in the Time of Enhanced Capital Flows: Reflections on the Links Between Liberalization and Informality
Chapter 5 The Changing Nature of the Informal Sector in Karachi Due to Global Restructuring and Liberalization, and Its Repercussions
Chapter 6 Globalization and the Politics of the Informals in the Global South
Chapter 7 The Politics of Urban Informalities
Chapter 8 Marginality: From Myth to Reality in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, 1969-2002
Chapter 9 The Gentleman's City: Urban Informality in the Calcutta of New Communism
Chapter 10 Tilting at Sphinxes: Locating Urban Informality in Egyptian Cities
Chapter 11 Control, Resistance, and Informality: Urban Ethnocracy in Beer-Sheva, Israel
Chapter 12 Transnational Interrogation
Chapter 13 Informality of Housing Production at the Urban-Rural Interface: The Not So Strange Case of the Texas Colonias
Chapter 14 Power, Property, and Poverty: Why De Soto's Mystery of Capital Cannot be Solved
Chapter 15 Transnational Trespassings: The Geopolitics of Informality