Informal Cities

Charlotte Vorms is associate professor of history at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University where she is also a member of the Center for the Social History of Contemporary Worlds. She is the author or coeditor of several books, including La forja del extrarradio and What’s in a Name?Brodwyn Fischer is professor of Latin American history at the University of Chicago, where she also directs the Global Studies Program. She is the author or coeditor of several books, including A Poverty of Rights and Cities from Scratch.

• Introduction: Informal Urbanism as HistoryBrodwyn Fischer and Charlotte VormsPart I: Law, Governance, and the Invention of Informality1. Four Regimes of Informality: Legal Practices and Revolutionary Politics in Twentieth-Century Mexico CityAntonio Azuela and Emilio de Antuñano2. From Insalubrious Housing to Unauthorized Neighborhoods: The Conceptualization of Urban Informality in Italy, 1880s–1960sFrancesco Bartolini3. A Century of Governing with Informal Urbanization in Madrid, 1860s–1960sCharlotte VormsPart II: Urban Informality and Political Struggle4. “The Order Came from Above”: The Political and Ideological Foundations of Fascism’s Struggle against the Baracche in RomeLuciano Villani5. Carioca Favelas and the Catholic Church after World War II: The Case of the Fundação Leão XIII’s Interventions in Praia do PintoRafael Soares Gonçalves6. Democratizing the Republic by Instituting the Informal: Barrio Irregularity in Caracas and Venezuelan Democratization, 1941–1964Serge Ollivier7. The Invention of the Toma: Informality and Mobilization in Santiago de Chile, 1945–1957Emanuel Giannotti and Boris Cofré SchmeisserPart III: Race and Colonial Domination8. Informality, Racialized Governance, and the Cidade Negra in Modern BrazilBrodwyn Fischer9. Bidonvilles in France: A New Term for an Old Phenomenon?Françoise de Barros10. Urban Risk? Constructing Shantytowns as a Problem of Colonial Governance in Algiers and Casablanca, 1919–1962Jim HouseNotesIndex

“The concept of urban informality has found firm ground. This is an excellent tightly organized volume, charting an open path for new research across disciplines. It should be read by anyone interested in why cities look the way they do.”