ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Henri Lefebvre critique of urbanism, which encompasses the approach of ‘state-bound specialists’, namely architects, planners and developers, and his critique of the dominant space which urbanism plays a role in realising. It also examines the contrasting approach that Lefebvre puts forward for the understanding of and strategising for urban space, and within this the way he treats spatial difference. Lefebvre theory of the urban informs his recommendations on urban strategy. Informal settlements, or in Lefebvre translators’ words, ‘shantytowns’, form a continuity of as well as a contradiction to the planned urban order. Lefebvre provides the conceptual vocabulary with which to recognise this as different intensities and forms of social life, appropriation, spontaneity, time-space, transgression, ordering of space and self-management. The use of the term ‘informal’ in dominant urban discourse implies a focus on transgression but ignores the political significance and possibility that Lefebvre associates with transgression.
