Informal Urban Land Development Types: Social and Business Practices

Informal neighborhoods of concentrated poverty are a ubiquitous global expression of unequal access to adequate housing. They manifest dual urban land markets operating under parallel sets of rules, those known as formal because they are institutionalized and legally defined, and those referred to as informal because they are not. However, as institutionalized practices are more often the exception than the rule, particularly in the global south, the notion of urban informality as an anomaly has been broadly refuted. Research on informality in urban development is shifting towards nuanced, context-specific understandings, as well as de-colonized interpretations of the underlying factors which might better explain its prevalence and persistence. There are, however, many assumptions about practices underlying their origin-how they work. Unpacking the functional urban operations of informal settlement in intermediate cities in Colombia suggests a diversity of practices, closely related to specificities of the contexts. Persisting dichotomic views between formal and informal settlement have obscured the structured, organized networks involved in these development processes, each engaging actors and land in different ways. To address this gap, a typology of informal land development practices which have promoted urban expansion in Colombian cities was structured as a framework to explore their specificities at the neighborhood level.