ABSTRACT
This chapter traces and theorizes the making of new urban divisions, namely those caused by the emergence of widespread urban informality. It claims that the study and conceptualization of ‘the divided city’ must pay serious attention to this structural and long-term type of division, which constitutes the new urban divide. Urban informalities denote developments, populations and transactions which do not comply with planning or legal regulations, and are denied planning approval or full membership in the urban community. Yet, by and large, these developments and populations continue to exist and grow, and become a major component of the new urban order. Hence, the process of ‘gray spacing’ has blurred the neat dichotomies between legal and illegal, citizen and alien, permanent and temporary. This phenomenon includes a combination of slums, squatters, invaders, illegal and temporary immigrants and their economies, and is conceptualized here as ‘gray space’.
