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Speculating on Slums: Infrastructural Fixes in Informal Housing in the Global South
Author(s) -
Desai Vandana,
Loftus Alex
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01044.x
Subject(s) - urbanization , capital (architecture) , structuring , work (physics) , global south , asset (computer security) , human settlement , space (punctuation) , security of tenure , financial crisis , economics , land tenure , economic growth , business , development economics , finance , geography , economic geography , linguistics , philosophy , agriculture , mechanical engineering , computer security , archaeology , computer science , engineering , macroeconomics
In this paper, we seek to revisit earlier work on the theory of rent, situating it in the current period of economic crisis and in relation to informal housing in the global South. More than ever, land is treated as a pure financial asset. Finance capital now exerts a profound influence over the production of space and exposes the built environment to the kinds of speculative binges that we have witnessed over the last decade. This is now as much a feature of living conditions in the poorest settlements of the global South as it is in the financial heartlands of the global North. We question key assumptions behind development interventions by arguing that infrastructural upgrading may decrease the security of tenure of residents of informal housing and call for a more nuanced approach that recognises the (post)colonial histories of urbanisation structuring access to land and housing.