Informality and Urban Politics

Abstract

The daily political routine of the city provides us with several niches where we can productively understand and explain the informal side of urban politics. The informal city, in fact, is also sustained by the informal political system and administrative process. Urban politics has a visible and formal arena regulated by the formal political system. It has also an informal side which survives in the interstices of, or serves as an extension to, the formal system. This is why we need to explain the mechanisms of its production and relations with the formal system.