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Informal Housing in the Global North: Exploring Practices, Actors and Processes in a Transforming Housing System book cover

1st Edition

Informal Housing in the Global North Exploring Practices, Actors and Processes in a Transforming Housing System

Edited By Jakub Galuszka Copyright 2026
198 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

198 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Informal Housing in the Global North proposes analytical and conceptual approaches to investigate the progressing ‘informalisation’ of contemporary housing in the Global North and beyond. Amidst the ongoing housing crisis, the reading of informalities in the so-called North has increasingly disrupted the conventional understanding of local cities as fully regulated, well-structured and... Read more

List of illustrations

List of contributors

1. Introduction: Perspectives on housing informality in the ‘North’
Jakub Gałuszka

Part I: Encroachment
2. Formal/informal continuum? Secondary dwelling production and digital rental markets in Sydney, Australia
Zahra Nasreen, Pranita Shrestha and Nicole Gurran
3. Navigating Hong Kong's informal housing: Stakeholders’ interactions on spatial quality in subdivided homes
Maggie Ma Kingsley and Jen Lam

Part II: Solidarities
4. Otherness and informality: everyday tactics of social inclusion among Oxford boating community
Jakub Gałuszka
5. Refugee access to housing in Germany: (In)formal restrictions and opportunities
Nihad El-Kayed

Part III: Struggles and appropriation
6. For a spatial politics of dwelling: Awareness, contestation and homemaking in the individual occupations of public housing in Naples, Italy
Emiliano Esposito
7. Making a platz in the city: How Roma families appropriate urban space to have a home in Paris suburbs
Céline Véniat

Part IV: Gatekeeping
8. Unpacking everyday management in a City Improvement District: property caretakers as street-level bureaucrats in Ekhaya, Hillbrow, Johannesburg
Thembani Mkhize
9. Living in someone else’s place: an exploration of subletting practices in Berlin
in Times of Housing Crisis.
Lucas Elsner, Minou Bouchehri, Olga Łojewska and Anna Potanina
10. Concluding remarks and way forward
Jakub Galuszka

Index

Biography

Jakub Galuszka is Junior Professor of Sustainable Cities and Climate Change at the HafenCity University Hamburg. His research focuses on housing, informality, co-production and urban sustainability. Currently, he leads two research projects: ‘Inconspicuous Transformations: the Socio-Spatial Reconfiguration of Formal Housing in Europe,’ funded by the DFG, and ‘Passive Solutions in Self-Build and Incremental Housing: Towards Inclusive Socio-Ecological Transformation in Rapidly Urbanising Areas,’ supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.

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