European Informal Urbanization through the 20th Century, a Historiography

Abstract

This communication proposes a historiographical analysis of informal urbanization in Europe, that is, the urban growth of popular housing areas outside of urban planning. Its objective is to show how History has dealt with these urban “problematic” forms generated as housing solution. Phenomenon today omnipresent in the vast majority of the world, much of the current research about it has pursued, from post-colonial and subaltern perspectives (ROY, 2011), induce a „dewesternization“ of urban theory (ROBINSON, 2006) (EDENSOR, JAYNE, 2011), overcoming the inertia and analytical frameworks that traditionally have differentiated Northern and Southern socio-urban phenomena (CHOPLIN, 2012). In that sense, we intend to build a discourse that rejects a European exceptionalism (HELMUT; AUST, 2012) that, although not explicitly stated in the field of urban studies, would presuppose the nonexistence of this kind of urban fabric, mainly in the countries of northern Europe, for cultural reasons. From our point of view, the „emergence“ of urban informality would be a counterpart to the evolution of a normative framework of a historical and transnational nature, linked to the evolution of the State in the twentieth century: the birth and development of urban planning. The analysis of historical accounts of diverse disciplinary fields reveals the existence, since the end of the 19th century, of forms of popular, unplannified urban growth all around Europe. Comparing texts about cities such as Paris, Madrid, London, Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Lisbon, Rome, Barcelona, Athens and Belgrade, we will show the relatively unknown European dimension of this phenomenon, discussing the different perspectives from which European informal urbanization has been studied.