ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a differentiation of the formal-informal continuum in housing, with regard to the exclusive or inclusive patterns of governance that are created. While much research and many strategies focus on the inclusiveness of institutionalised participation, it is important to ask how the minority formal sector can be included in a housing process that is primarily self-organised and produced outside of regulations. It agrees with the understanding of informality as a convergence of legality and extra-legality in the same process and with the central assumption that 'planning is not an antidote to informality'. Informality occurs in terms of land occupation, layout of sites, shelter construction and infrastructure provisions. The chapter argues that there is indeed a globalisation from below that is capable of social regulation in the housing process and, moreover, of reframing the system of governance itself. The techniques to do so derive from rearticulating urban social formations.
