Social infrastructures from a global perspective: beyond the formal and informal divide

Abstract

In this chapter, conceptualizations of the formal/informal are related to social infrastructure in order to allow for a different reading beyond the seemingly (un)regulated production of different typologies of social infrastructures. By describing urban informality conceptions along their development in time, different and more specific definitions, understandings and readings of social infrastructure become visible, focusing on the diverse specificity of geographical, political, historical, and social realities. Exploring informality as a form of practice (McFarlane, 2012) and reading social infrastructures as “peopled” (Simone, 2004) referring directly to people’s activities in the city helps on the one hand to uncover the interrelatedness of different social infrastructures (such as housing, education, health etc.) and on the other hand to reveal the connection between everyday-life practices and infrastructures against the background of power structures.