ABSTRACT
‘Urban villages’ are a phenomenon unique to China. They house millions of rural-to-urban migrants from neighboring provinces in search of better opportunities in the city but with only limited access to the formal housing market. ‘Urban villages’ differ from other informal settlements in Southeast Asia insofar as (1) they enjoy collective land use rights, reducing the struggles for access to resources, and (2) the negotiating power of these villages is relatively strong due to their high level of legitimacy and their land resources.
In this chapter, we argue that informal urbanization needs to be discussed beyond issues of poverty and physical space in order to gain a better understanding of the political space of negotiation around urbanization that reflects the reality in most cities of the global South. Recognizing the complexity of what has been defined as ‘informality’, this chapter suggests looking at the underlying processes that characterize informal urbanization in southern China, in which resources are negotiated by means of legitimacy and authority to obtain power. The south Chinese megacity of Guangzhou provides an example of how urbanization is negotiated in a complex multi-stakeholder setting, allowing informal urbanization to emerge and, at times, drive growth (spatially and economically).
