Illegal Housing Research Articles

Illegal luxuritecture: How the super-rich in Hong Kong land grab and unlawfully expand their luxury living spaces

This article introduces the concept of ‘illegal luxuritecture’ – illegal luxury architecture – to capture the way a minority of super-rich expand their living environments without planning permissions, sometimes through land grabs of government land. Typically, illegal housing is associated with the urban poor, but it is argued that through elite capture, unauthorised building works (UBWs) have also been utilised by the super-rich. This article focusses on Hong Kong where a number of illegal luxuritectural structures came to light after September 2023 when the most severe rainstorm since records began in the 19th century caused the collapse of unauthorised building works. Illegal luxuritectural construction involves illegally altering building foundations and sometimes flood protection walls, causing destabilisation of soil and creating landslides. Although failure to comply with Building (Planning) Regulations and the Buildings Ordinance is a criminal offence which can result in fines or imprisonment, findings suggest that a minority of the elite class tends to ignore these regulations. This is because, the fines for unauthorised building works are relatively small in relation to the high value of the property or the rental income generated, and prison sentences are almost never imposed. This article contributes to the current academic discussions on the super-rich in general and the housing of the global super-rich in particular.

Community Organizing towards Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management in Flood-prone Settlement Revitalization Project (The Case of RW 01 Mojo, Surakarta, in Bengawan Solo Riverbank)

Squatter settlement of Bengawan Solo riverbank had been a complicated issue since early 2000s. The problem of land tenure, substandard infrastructure, illegal housing, and low socio-economic resilience adding up to the already flood-prone urban area of Surakarta. This paper aimed to understand the dynamics of community organization during the proses of revitalization project. Using a qualitative approach, a range of data were collected from official documents, two indepth interviews and two focus group discussions. Revitalization project came up looking like a panacea in a collaborative approach manifesting in negotiation on how revitalization took place. The findings were revealed using CSDRM tool, uncovered that upon the implementation, stakeholders network dynamics had undergone significant changes through the process of community organizing. External actors offered a trigger to the community to organize itself, to handle conflict and to plan a resolution. The dynamics of stakeholder network showed that innovative approach of urban revitalization in RW 1 Mojo has unleash the potentials of riverbank community to contribute more towards a resilient urban area, induced by the external stakeholders.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF THE RESIDENT WELFARE ASSOCIATIONS (RWA) IN INDIA.

A Resident Welfare Association (RWA) is a Non-governmental organization representing the interests of the residents of a specific urban or semi-urban locality in India. Resident Welfare Association is not an official government body, and illegal housing localities in India can form RWAs to represent citizen interests. Each residential colony has its own resident welfare association (RWA). Its primary objective is to work toward the common good of all residents in a given area, as the name suggests. At the same time, it is governed by roles and responsibilities to ensure its efficient operation. RWAs are typically registered under cooperative societies acts; it requires groups to have a minimum of fifteen members from a given area, or under the Apartment Owners Act of the state as an "association of apartment owners" or under Societies Registration Act (central Act or state Act), it needs minimum ten members. RWAs are being created in any apartment for better coordination, living style, and harmony among the residents. Sustain social connection is always a priority but not at the cost of discipline. Due to various reasons, the clubs and special interest groups sometimes create problems for the normal functioning of the RWAs. Many issues and conflicts are reported due to the absence of the basic standard operating system of the RWA governance. The Residents Welfare Association of the high-rise buildings of the smart cities is evolving, and there is no clear-cut guideline for the RWA governance from the government. So it is essential to conduct a deep study for the effective functioning of the Residents Welfare Association in India. The essence of the study is to identify the roles, responsibilities, limitations, and challenges of the Residents Welfare Association in India.

The Expression of Illegal Urbanism in the Urban Morphology and Landscape: The Case of the Metropolitan Area of Seville (Spain)

Illegal urbanism has been, and still is, an inherent aspect of the metropolitan fabric of many Spanish cities shaped throughout the twentieth century. The morphology of these complex spaces, with origins in organic growth processes, reflects illegal housing developments through discordant, poorly connected networks, often with significant landscape and environmental impacts. The metropolitan area of Seville, comprising almost 5000 km2 and more than 1,500,000 inhabitants, is a paradigmatic space where these facts can be traced, especially in its western sector, where the strong urbanisation dynamics of the last decades have reached and engulfed many of these housing developments. This work establishes an analysis and proposes typologies of the different repercussions of the process in this territory. It does so by drawing on, among other sources, two regional inventories on illegal urbanism, which allow the application of a diachronic perspective and fieldwork with information synchronised to the present time. The main conclusion is that, in addition to explaining the complex metropolitan networks in which they appear (justifying singular forms, asymmetries, and morphologies), the illegal housing developments analysed are an important element for weighing the sociopolitical characteristics of the municipalities in which they are inserted.

POPULATION GROWTH IN BATAM MUNICIPALITY AS THE FRONTIER AND OUTERMOST REGION AT THE BORDER BETWEEN INDONESIA-SINGAPORE-MALAYSIA

The systematic and accurate data on population has become pivotal point to overview the development of population in particular region, so that it required to a conduct a study to explore the description of the population growth rate, the factors causing the high population growth rate, and the impact of the high population growth rate in Batam Municipality. This study was exploratory research with a qualitative approach to analyze the population phenomenon in Batam Municipality. Data were collected using observation, interview, documentation, and audio-visual material collection. Informants were determined by purposive sampling and snowball techniques. This study used the Spradley analysis model with four stages of analysis, such as domain, taxonomic, components, and cultural themes. The results showed that the population growth rate increased from 1980 to 2012, but began to decline since the decline in economic growth in 2013 which indicated that the population growth rate in Batam Municipality followed the pattern of economic growth. The high rate of population growth was due to the high number of in-migration (65%) and high birth rates (35%), because most migrants were in productive age. The high rate of population growth in Batam Municipality had caused various population problems, such as citizenship status, citizenship administration services, illegal housing, traffic congestion, clean water crisis, waste accumulation, potential loss of local ethnic values, potential ethnic conflict, and potential increased of crime rate in Batam Municipality.

Why foreclosed housing devalues in China? An evaluation based on property-rights risks through hedonic pricing model

The judicial auction is the sole approach to address foreclosed housing in China. Recently, the pervasive devaluation of foreclosed properties in many cities has become an alarming trend, given its potential to trigger a debt crisis in China's housing system. However, scant research has delved into the reasons why foreclosed properties tend to devalue in comparison to second-hand properties under comparable circumstances. This inquiry scrutinizes three types of property-rights risks in judicial auctions, namely cost risk, acquisition risk, and usufruct risk, using the hedonic pricing model. The results indicate that property-rights risks can dampen homebuyers' willingness to pay, as evidenced by the depreciation of the initial auction price. Nonetheless, credible commitments offered by courts can effectively alleviate property-rights risks, particularly for high-risk properties such as small-property-rights housing or illegal housing, whose transactions are heavily reliant on the courts' credibility.

Use of Geospatial Technologies to Identify the Impact of Deforestation and its Associate Event (Soil Erosion) in the North-Bilate Watershed, Southern Ethiopia

The rapid population growth in Southern Ethiopia's North-Bilate watershed, specifically in the Boyo Lake area, has resulted in widespread deforestation and soil erosion, affecting the livelihood of farmers. Thus, the current study aimed at assessing the effects of land cover change on soil erosion and agricultural land. For this purpose, 2 lands sat ETM images for the years 2000 and 2020 which have 30*30m resolution were used. The main trajectories of land use change are based on five land use classes which are farmland, built-up area, forest, bare land, water, and open area derived from the remotely sensed images. The analysis showed that Bushland and built-up areas increased with a rate of 1.2 and 2.6 ha/year between 2000 and 2020, respectively. On the contrary, woodland, farmland, and bare land had decreased by 0.2, 0.4, and 3.2 ha/year in the same study period. The NDVI value response of the study period clearly shows the highest value for vegetation cover change, as the maximum value was +0.91 in 2000 and the minimum value was -0.38 in 2020. The dramatic expansion of settlements was due to the runoff of farmland, woodland, and bare land within the allotted period due to rapid population growth and migration from the surrounding rural areas, poor land management, and illegal housing. In summary, signs of deforestation and consequent soil erosion due to population growth, agricultural expansion, forest depletion, and mismanagement are leading to reductions in vegetation cover and agricultural productivity. To minimize soil erosion, physical measures such as terracing and dams should be implemented. In addition, to preserve and increase the biodiversity of the study area, the planting of various types of native vegetation and plantation tree species should be carried out with a viable afforestation and reforestation program.

Incomplete-ownership property communities: Informal gated communities in Beijing and the issue of life satisfaction

Informal housing and social inequality are key issues when building sustainable societies in many developing countries. Informal gated communities on the urban fringe are common in many cities in China. This article presents a micro-case in Beijing in an attempt to uncover the reasons for this informal land development and its impact on residents' life satisfaction. We investigated three groups of people, namely local rural villagers who hold local rural Hukous, local urban residents who hold local urban Hukous, and migrants without local Hukous who live in informal communities in Beijing. We found that villagers, migrants and local urban residents have significant differences in economic income levels, housing areas and subjective satisfaction with their quality of life. Although the difference in subjective well-being between migrants and urban people is not obvious, those who own illegal housing in informal communities have higher levels of happiness than those who rent housing. It seems that ownership of informal housing plays a positive role in enhancing life satisfaction, despite it being illegal. These findings enhance our existing knowledge of the formation mechanism and the effects of informal development.

Illegal Housing in Medellín: Autoconstruction and the Materiality of Hope

ABSTRACTDrawing on ethnographic research in El Oasis, a highly precarious self-built settlement in Medellín, Colombia, this article examines the illegal practice of autoconstruction as a material expression of hope. It focuses on the multilayered, symbolic meaning of self-built housing, as it represents the pursuit of dignity, permanence, and agency—as opposed to poverty, uncertainty, and lack of agency—and an active and material form of hoping for a better future in the city. The state plays an ambiguous role in residents’ perspectives, who conceive of it, simultaneously, as a threat to and a guarantor of their future in the city. This ambiguity becomes materialized in the physical form of residents’ self-built housing, as residents either embrace or refrain from making improvements to their houses in response to shifting perceptions about the state’s intentions regarding the future of the settlement.

SPATIO-TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF URBAN LAND USE AND LAND COVER CHANGE USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNIQUES IN HOSSANA TOWN, ETHIOPIA

Urban expansion is widespread in most developing countries while the nearby farmland area coverage is shrinking which in turn attracting the attention of many actors to manage the encroachment scientifically. This study aims to analyze the urban land use and land cover change in Hossana town using geospatial techniques. Three Landsat images were used and analyzed using ArcMap 10.5. The images were classified and reclassified into six land use classes. The result showed visible land cover change and a high rate of town expansion in the study area. The forest area surrounding the town and bareland decreased from 5702 (48.8 %) to 1515 ha (12.97 %) and from 2224.3 ha (19.1%) to 226.2 ha (1.94 %) from 1986 to 2019 whereas farmland and built-up areas increased rapidly from 3078 ha (26.4%) to 5599.5 ha (47.95%) and from 141.1 (1.2%) to 3581.4 ha (30.67%) in the study period, respectively. Thus, the land cover change result for the built-up area has eventually expanded through the study period. In contrary, the land cover under forest, water, bareland, open area (greenery) and farmland have shown tremendous decrease within the last three decades, respectively. The expansion of farmland and settlement areas implies high population inflow to the urban area from the rural and fringe areas. Thus, the settlement pattern and land use shall be governed by well-planned policies to manage rapid population growth and migration from rural areas which causes poor land management and illegal housing. The application of geospatial techniques are mandatory tools to analyze the spatio-temporal changes in urban areas.

The Tabooed City

The year 2009 shall remain a milestone year in the century as the year which witnessed the major shift of diaspora in urban centers of India for the first time in human history. In this context, it is essential to understand the socio-spatial negotiations happening and may happen ahead between the physically growing city and the everyday life, work-live relationship of these invisible communities within the city. Does the growing city with an economic disparity and tremendous polarization of amenities consider their criticality and social aspects which are deeply rooted within these communities, thriving in the vast and continually changing physical fabric?The planning framework of the cities are manifestations of a bigger play of byelaws and demonstration of power often blurs out the existence of inculcating the ‘excluded’ quarters of the city within a holistic whole. As a result, these quarters grow sporadically within the city creating a sense of anarchy. This paper tries to seek the relationship of state and political hegemony with these “excluded zones” where profit, political stability, and a constant saga of the failure of proposals to regenerate a highly diverse settlement within the financial capital of India. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai is a sprawling 525‐acre area with shanty roofs and deleterious sanitation conditions, housing over one million residents diversified in terms of its religious and ethnic matrix along with a wide gamut of informal occupations which makes it unique. Dharavi’s residents like most slum dwellers around the world, live in illegal housing units lacking basic amenities and suffer from social exclusion.The paper would critically investigate the failure of community engagement and mobilization attempts forming cooperatives, formation of the several schemes across three decades and failures of almost all policies raising questions of redevelopment, how costing and finance schemes were mostly inefficient at large.The paper would also try to understand the scale and scalability of various neo-liberal redevelopment processes initiated by political will, largely vested in the interest of capitalistic gains and focusing less on addressing the complexities and issues of the existing socio-economic conditions.

Flexible and compassionate, or violent and intimidating?: various accounts of law in Vietnam

ABSTRACT This paper provides a bottom-up analysis of law in daily life in Vietnam through an empirical study of low-income residents’ engagement in illegal housing activities in a peri-urban area of Ho Chi Minh City. Different from most existing studies of law and social change which take the formal institutional framework of law as their starting point, this paper examines the uses and meanings of law as products of interactions between citizens, local authorities, and intermediary actors. From an in-depth analysis of the residents’ stories, it argues that the role of law within daily life in Vietnam must be understood through the enactment of two opposing, but mutually connected, forms of legality. One form emphasizes informality and sentiment, while the other emphasizes violence and intimidation. The former accommodates and answers to people’s survival needs, while the latter constrains if not suppresses those needs. These forms of legality are mutually connected because they unfold in an ambiguous area of law enforcement that is largely subject to local authorities’ arbitrary discretion. These findings allow for a conceptualization of everyday legality in which law is both manipulable and emancipatory, but also disadvantageous and sanctioning.

Spaces of Suspension: Construction, Demolition, and Extension in a Beijing Migrant Neighbourhood

Communities with large concentrations of migrants, who often live in makeshift and illegal housing, have been common on the margins of large cities in China since the 1980s. Why do so-called "urban villages" persist and even flourish despite repeated government crackdowns? By addressing this question, this article sheds light on a subtle dynamic of city making that has not been fully appreciated by scholarly literature and media reports that have focused on large-scale demolition and eviction in China's rapid urbanization. Drawing from my two years of field research in Hua village, a community on Beijing's fringes in line for land expropriation, I explore how multilateral negotiations between local residents (villagers), migrant tenants, the village committee, and municipal government led to a cyclical movement of temporary housing construction, demolition, and extension. The dynamics of recurring demolishment and reconstruction engendered spaces of suspension, which enabled migrants to enter the urban economy at a low cost. Such spaces, however, offered no formal protection or basis for developing lasting social relations, and always faced the prospect of being demolished, but nevertheless were constantly available and even expanding.

Informal housing of the rich: Clustering, isolating, and concealing in Bogotá, Colombia

While research has put the spotlight on analysing informality of the urban poor in the global South, informal housing practices of affluent urbanites have been almost completely overlooked. This article contributes to filling this research gap by investigating illegal housing for upper-income residents in the protected forest area of the eastern hills of Bogotá. More precisely, it quantifies and localizes this phenomenon and, subsequently, it identifies its main geographical, physical, and morphological features. Three interrelated strategic features of such a phenomenon are then recognized – clustering, isolating, and concealing; these can serve as a conceptual guideline for analysing other cases of elite informality in Latin America. They simultaneously underline the existence of a connection between (upper-income) informality and enclave urbanism (gated communities, in particular).

Lessons from Tradition in the Building of Contemporary Settlements: The Case of Tafilalt in the M'zab Valley, Algeria

Since Algeria’s independence from France in 1962, the M’zab Valley in the northern Sahara has witnessed a rapid growth in population. Both legal and illegal housing has been built outside the walls of the M’zab’s ancient towns, damaging the environmental and cultural heritage of the area. In response, its long-standing residents have identified protocols for building a number of carefully planned settlements inspired by the original towns. One of these new settlements is Tafilalt, begun in 1997. Based in part on in-depth interviews with residents and the developers of the project, this article studies the construction of Tafilalt by its occupants and their perceptions of their new home. It asks how the M’zab’s traditional methods of planning, building and managing settlements have been adapted to the community’s current needs, who makes up the community, and to what extent Tafilalt might be seen as a model to be used elsewhere.

AFRICAN MULTILATERAL RESPONSES TO THE CRISIS IN ZIMBABWE

The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) represents one of the key normative developments towards mitigating global human rights violations. Normatively, the RtoP advances the notion of responsible sovereignty by obligating states to protect their people from humanitarian catastrophe and emphasises the residual role of the international community in the event of lack of capacity or the state's unwillingness to protect. It is in this context that this article examines RtoP mitigation measures instituted by the South African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) as regional multilateral institutions in responding to the crisis in Zimbabwe. The article considers the extent to which the responses have been guided implicitly or explicitly by RtoP principles. The evolution and consolidation of the humanitarian crisis has been considered, with specific focus on the human security impact of government policies, in particular, Operation Murambatsvina (the destruction of what were deemed illegal housing structures in major cities in Zimbabwe in May 2005) and the unprecedented 2008 electoral violence as a result of increased militarisation of governance structures. Debate on the applicability of RtoP to the crisis in Zimbabwe is thus located within the broader framework of the normative theories of international relations that forms the basis of RtoP. The article argues that escalation of the government induced humanitarian crisis was as a result of lack of timeous or effective responses by both the AU and SADC. Again, the AU and SADC responses were significantly influenced by diverse, often mutually exclusive, interpretations of the main causes of the crisis. Another salient finding is the extent to which politicisation of RtoP and lack of political will undermined RtoP operationalisation.

Determination of the nighttime light imagery for urban city population using DMSP-OLS methods in Istanbul.

Demography researchers and scientists have been effectively utilizing advanced technologies and methods such as geographical information systems, spatial statistics, georeferenced data, and satellite images for the last 25 years. Areal interpolation methods have also been adopted for the development of population density maps which are essential for a variety of social and environmental studies. Still, a good number of social scientists are skeptical about such technologies due to the complexity of methods and analyses. In this regard, a practical intelligent dasymetric mapping (IDM) tool that facilitates the implementation of the statistical analyses was used in this study to develop the population distribution map for the Istanbul metropolitan area via night light data provided by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) and the census records of the study area. A population density map was also produced using the choropleth mapping method to enable to make a comparison of the traditional and intelligent population density mapping implementations. According to the dasymetric population density map, 38.5% of the study area fell into sparse density category while low, moderate, high, and very high population density class percentages were found to be 9.4%, 5.5%, 2.9%, and 0.1% respectively. On the other hand, the percentages of the same population density classes ranking from sparse to very high in the choropleth map were determined to be 90.7%, 7.3%, 1.7%, 0.3%, and 0%. In the change analysis made as a result of the classification, the changes between the city area and the population were revealed. During this period, the city area and population grew. Spatial change has also been interpreted by comparing it with population changes. There appears to be a remarkable increase in both surface area and population. It is observed that the increase is especially in the south and northwest of the city. With the population increase, the number of new residential areas has increased. It is thought that behind this growth, there are different reasons besides the effect of the increase in residential areas. When the environmental awareness of people has increased more than in the past centuries, new solutions should be produced in order to be more controlled, smart, and sustainable while planning the cities of the future. Considering that the development of technology and remote sensing techniques is progressing in parallel with this technology, this study in which GIS technologies integrated with satellite images are used, it is thought that it will contribute positively to the studies in this area in terms of regular development of urban areas, increasing the opportunity to make fast and correct decisions, and creating infrastructure for studies such as monitoring and prevention of illegal housing.

Housing Wealth Status and Informal Accumulation of Rural Villages at the Rural-Urban Fringe in Shanghai, China

Housing wealth among urban residents has been a hotspot issue, but there is a dearth of literature focusing on rural housing wealth. Using housing registration data in Shanghai, this study examines the status and accumulation of rural housing wealth at the rural-urban fringe. Results show that rural housing wealth at the rural-urban fringe is characterized by high stock and frequent extension and reconstruction dominated by auxiliary houses. Rural housing wealth is still relatively equitable, but compared to their initial housing wealth distribution, disparities in urban villages or suburban villages are obviously higher than in the outer suburbs. These disparities are mainly driven by the expansion and reconstruction of rural auxiliary houses, typically the horizontal expansion of auxiliary homes. We suggest that defining explicit construction rules for rural auxiliary will help to avoid the disorder increase in illegal housing and, subsequently, rural housing wealth disparity.

- Fes illegal housing and restructuring strategy – The state of the JNANATES

هدفت هذه الدراسة البحثية إلى مقاربة وتحديد ظاهرة السكن غير القانوني بمدينة فاس، وذلك من خلال إبراز أهم العوامل والميكانيزمات المساهمة في نشأتها، ثم أهم المراحل التي عرفتها، إضافة إلى أهم التدخلات والاستراتيجيات التي تبنتها الدولة لهيكلتها. ولمقاربة هذا الموضوع أكاديميا، ارتكزنا على المنهج النسقي وذلك لأهميته في دراسة مختلف العلاقات والتفاعلات بين الارتفاع المتسارع للنمو الديمغرافي نتيجة الزيادة الطبيعية للسكان والهجرة القروية أساسا، ثم ارتفاع الطلب على السكن في حين امتلأت المدينة القديمة بسبب نفاذ وعائها العقاري وارتفاع السكن بالمدينة الجديدة، كل هذه العوامل أدت إلى بروز ظاهرة السكن غير القانوني بهوامش مدينة فاس. كما توصلنا من خلال هذه الدراسة إلى أهم النتائج والتوصيات ندرجها على الشكل التالي: رغم الإجراءات التي تم اتخادها لإيجاد حلول لمعضلة السكن غير القانوني بمدينة فاس ولاسيما المتواجد في الجزء الشمالي الشرقي للمدينة مازال يطرح عدة مشاكل على المستوى الاقتصادي والاجتماعي والبيئي، ولهذا نقترح: - إدماج كل الأحياء غير القانونية المتواجدة بمدينة فاس وذلك من خلال هيكلتها وتزويدها بمختلف التجهيزات الأساسية. -دعم ميزانية الجماعات المحلية بشكل معقول من أجل مساهمتها الفعالة في تمويل برامج هيكلة السكن غير القانوني، وكذا توسيع صلاحياتها على مستوى استراتيجية التدخل. -الحد من تداخل اختصاصات الفاعلين في مجال عملية الهيكلة، والحث على التنسيق فيما بينهم لإنجاح العملية. -على الدولة أن تعي بأن ظاهرة السكن غير القانوني هي أمر واقع لا مناص منه، وبالتالي فعليها أن تكون لها إرادة فعلية لمعالجتها عبر إنعاش ودعم برامج السكن الاقتصادي والاجتماعي مع مراعات عامل الجودة في البناء. -بلورة مشاريع سوسيواقتصادية (مشاريع التأهيل الحضري) بالمدينة عموما، وبشكل خاص بالأحياء غير القانونية وذلك بهدف تشغيل الساكنة لتساهم في تمويل برامج الهيكلة وإعادة الإسكان. -الرفع من التعويضات بالنسبة للأسر المقيمة بالبنايات المهددة بالانهيار مقابل الإفراغ من أجل إعادة الإسكان. -دعم وتطوير الأنشطة التقليدية بالجنانات وتثمينها بهدف تحقيق التنمية المحلية. -على المستوى البيئي، تشجيع الاستثمار فيما يخص إحداث مساحات خضراء تنسجم مع عدد السكان. -إشراك المجتمع المدني في عمليات الهيكلة ومشاريع التأهيل الحضري. -الاهتمام بالمجال القروي وذلك من خلال التسريع بتفعيل المخططات والاستراتيجيات المنتهجة (استراتيجية التنمية القروية، مشاريع التنمية البشرية، المخطط الأخضر... إلخ) بهدف الرقي الاقتصادي والاجتماعي بالنسبة للعالم القروي وذلك للحد أو بالأحرىالتخفيف من الهجرة القروية باتجاه المدينة.

The Dark Side of Urban Informality in the Global North: Housing Illegality and Organized Crime in Northern Italy

AbstractThis article deals with housing illegality/informality in Italy, where it represents an established aspect of urban development. It presents a case study focused on Desio, a town close to Milan in northern Italy. Here housing illegality occurs by virtue of the well‐established presence of a mafia‐type criminal organization (the ‘Ndrangheta). Three examples of illegal construction in Desio are analysed, forming the basis for a discussion on the distinctive features of illegal house‐building in Italy. In particular, institutional incentives encouraging illegal housing are investigated, with reference to both formal institutions (e.g. planning laws, rules preventing unauthorized housing and building amnesties) and informal institutions (e.g. organized crime). The case of illegal housing in Italy contributes significantly to the wider international debate on urban informality, highlighting the critical need for research along avenues as yet only partially explored (e.g. informal housing in Western countries and the role of criminal activities and actors in the spread of informality) and challenging some common assumptions such as the geographical dualism (‘global North’ versus ‘global South’) which, implicitly, results from the international literature.