Rethinking the Theoretical Divide: Urban Informality in the Global North

The Penn IUR Forum on Urban Informality hosted the third seminar in its ‘Conversations on Informality’ series on September 3rd, 2021. The first guest speaker for the seminar, Robert Fairbanks II, Lecturer and Fellow, Urban Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania, presented his ethnographic work on the informal processes characterizing the housing industry and poverty survival strategies in the Kensington area in a post-industrial Philadelphia. He underscored the relationship between the city and its strategic engagement with the “engine of informality” over the last few decades.

The second presentation was by Noah Durst, Assistant Professor, Urban and Regional Planning School of Planning, Design, & Construction, Michigan State University, who outlined his findings on informal housing in the United States. He identified different housing regulatory regimes and the varied manifestations of informal housing within these contexts. In his reflection for future research, he put forth the possibility of understanding informality as being interwoven with formal aspects of the market, taking its geographical variations (within the United States) into account, and the processes which lead to its (re)production.

Following their presentations, Fairbanks and Durst answered questions on the role of regulatory regimes, the differing and strategic nature of state-engagement, and the processes which characterize informality as it exists in the urban United States. The last part of the discussion focused on the need to not only map the impact of regulations (both their intended and unintended consequences), but also to unpack the conditions and motivations that gave rise to those regulations.

• Noah Durst Presentation Materials
• Robert Fairbanks II Presentation Materials