Urban Informality and Narrative Form
1st Edition
Published on 13. February 2026
282 pages
978-1-040-55901-7 (ISBN)
Description
Urban Informality and Narrative Form brings together literary analysis and spatial planning theory in an interdisciplinary study of urban informality. It examines a diverse array of literary and cinematic fictions from across the globe--West and North Africa, West and South Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America--in dialogue with influential social scientific studies of urban informality.
Leading scholar Eric Prieto explores the formal and representational strategies authors have used to address the realities of life in the informal city. He demonstrates the ability of literary texts to provide significant insights into the kinds of real-world concerns that preoccupy planning and policy specialists but that have remained resistant to the more traditional methodologies of urban studies and planning. The book sheds new light on the forces that have led to the prevalence of urban informality in the Global South, while also debunking some common misconceptions about the phenomenon, highlighting the great diversity of subjective experiences hidden behind the euphemistic "informal settlement" (or the more pejorative "slum"), and identifying some of the most promising ways forward for the urban poor. At a time when over half of all city dwellers in the Global South live in an in informal settlement of some kind, the urgency of the topic could not be clearer.
With its global breadth and novel methodology (using urban theory as literary theory), this book will be of interest to scholars of urban literature, postcolonial and world literature, and to social scientists working in the spatial planning and policy fields.
Leading scholar Eric Prieto explores the formal and representational strategies authors have used to address the realities of life in the informal city. He demonstrates the ability of literary texts to provide significant insights into the kinds of real-world concerns that preoccupy planning and policy specialists but that have remained resistant to the more traditional methodologies of urban studies and planning. The book sheds new light on the forces that have led to the prevalence of urban informality in the Global South, while also debunking some common misconceptions about the phenomenon, highlighting the great diversity of subjective experiences hidden behind the euphemistic "informal settlement" (or the more pejorative "slum"), and identifying some of the most promising ways forward for the urban poor. At a time when over half of all city dwellers in the Global South live in an in informal settlement of some kind, the urgency of the topic could not be clearer.
With its global breadth and novel methodology (using urban theory as literary theory), this book will be of interest to scholars of urban literature, postcolonial and world literature, and to social scientists working in the spatial planning and policy fields.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
7 Halftones, black and white; 7 Illustrations, black and white
File size
115,70 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-55901-7 (9781040559017)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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Eric Prieto
Urban Informality and Narrative Form
Book
approx. 02/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€64.70
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Eric Prieto
Urban Informality and Narrative Form
Book
approx. 02/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€211.40
Not yet published
Person
Eric Prieto is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is the author of Literature, Geography, and the Postmodern Poetics of Place (2012) and co-editor of Urban Discourses of Crisis, Resilience, and Resistance (with Liam Lanigan and Anni Lappela; 2025).
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Part I Theoretical and Historical Groundwork
Chapter 1 Introduction
Bibliography
Chapter 2 Informal Urbanism and/as Representational Crisis
Between the boosters and the hawks
Beyond Manichean politics
Representational crisis in urban studies
Literature and the discursive field of urban informality
Towards a transductive approach to Literary Urban Studies
Bibliography
Chapter 3 Changing Paradigms in Urban Studies
Informality and urban planning, a history
The modernists
The 1976 self-help consensus: Turner, Perlman, Karpat
The test of time: Revisiting Karpat, Perlman, and Turner's theories
Economic Crisis, Structural Adjustment, and Hernando de Soto
Bibliography
Chapter 4 A New Generation of Urban Informalists
Mike Davis and the Challenge of Slums
Justin McGuirk's Radical Cities: A hybridizing approach
Jennifer Robinson and ordinary cities
Ananya Roy and "policy epistemologies"
AbdouMaliq Simone, PAI and urban futures
Bibliography
Chapter 5 Literary Mappings of the Informal City
Some precursors
Urban informality in postcolonial literary history
Two rhetorical tendencies of shanty fiction: the hyperbolic and the normalizing Insider, outsider, guarantor, guide (on multifocalization)
Realism and representational innovation: A transductive itinerary
Bibliography
List of literary and cinematic works mentioned, alphabetical by author/director
Part II Interdisciplinary Cross-readings
Chapter 6 Hybrid Urbanization and Literary Space: Paulo Lins's City of God and Naima Tagemouati's La Liste
Paulo Lins's City of God, spatial form, and the neighborhood effect
Naima Lahbil Tagemouati's La Liste and the Great Paradox of urban planning
Endings, afterlives, conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 7 Ordinary Cities I: Upward Mobility in Istanbul (Pamuk and Tekin)
Normalizing Informality in Orhan Pamuk's A Strangeness in My Mind
Hyperbolic informality in Latife Tekin's Berji Kristin
Representational politics in Tekin and Pamuk
Bibliography
Chapter 8 Memorializing People as Infrastructure in Abidjan and Dakar (Rouch, Sembene, Mambety)
Jean Rouch's, Moi, un noir: PAI in colonial Treichville
Ousmane Sembene's Borom Sarret: PAI (and its risks) in independence-era Dakar
Djibril Diop Mambety's La petite vendeuse de Soleil : PAI after structural adjustment
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 9 Ordinary Cities II: Fables of Urban (Im)Mobility in Yaounde and Lagos
Rumors of humanity in Patrice Nganang's Dog Days
Identitarian Flux and Urban Mobility in A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass
Next steps and last words (in media res)
Bibliography
Chapter 10 Climates of Uncertainty (Patterson, Chamoiseau, Saulter, and KSR)
Rastafarian Environmentalism in Orlando Patterson's Children of Sisyphus
Creole environmentalism in Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco
Techno-environmental futures in Stephanie Saulter's (R)Evolution Trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson's climate fictions and the end(s) of capitalism
Some tactical conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 11 Executive Summary and Closing Remarks (Soft Eyes)
Looking back
Looking ahead
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Part I Theoretical and Historical Groundwork
Chapter 1 Introduction
Bibliography
Chapter 2 Informal Urbanism and/as Representational Crisis
Between the boosters and the hawks
Beyond Manichean politics
Representational crisis in urban studies
Literature and the discursive field of urban informality
Towards a transductive approach to Literary Urban Studies
Bibliography
Chapter 3 Changing Paradigms in Urban Studies
Informality and urban planning, a history
The modernists
The 1976 self-help consensus: Turner, Perlman, Karpat
The test of time: Revisiting Karpat, Perlman, and Turner's theories
Economic Crisis, Structural Adjustment, and Hernando de Soto
Bibliography
Chapter 4 A New Generation of Urban Informalists
Mike Davis and the Challenge of Slums
Justin McGuirk's Radical Cities: A hybridizing approach
Jennifer Robinson and ordinary cities
Ananya Roy and "policy epistemologies"
AbdouMaliq Simone, PAI and urban futures
Bibliography
Chapter 5 Literary Mappings of the Informal City
Some precursors
Urban informality in postcolonial literary history
Two rhetorical tendencies of shanty fiction: the hyperbolic and the normalizing Insider, outsider, guarantor, guide (on multifocalization)
Realism and representational innovation: A transductive itinerary
Bibliography
List of literary and cinematic works mentioned, alphabetical by author/director
Part II Interdisciplinary Cross-readings
Chapter 6 Hybrid Urbanization and Literary Space: Paulo Lins's City of God and Naima Tagemouati's La Liste
Paulo Lins's City of God, spatial form, and the neighborhood effect
Naima Lahbil Tagemouati's La Liste and the Great Paradox of urban planning
Endings, afterlives, conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 7 Ordinary Cities I: Upward Mobility in Istanbul (Pamuk and Tekin)
Normalizing Informality in Orhan Pamuk's A Strangeness in My Mind
Hyperbolic informality in Latife Tekin's Berji Kristin
Representational politics in Tekin and Pamuk
Bibliography
Chapter 8 Memorializing People as Infrastructure in Abidjan and Dakar (Rouch, Sembene, Mambety)
Jean Rouch's, Moi, un noir: PAI in colonial Treichville
Ousmane Sembene's Borom Sarret: PAI (and its risks) in independence-era Dakar
Djibril Diop Mambety's La petite vendeuse de Soleil : PAI after structural adjustment
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 9 Ordinary Cities II: Fables of Urban (Im)Mobility in Yaounde and Lagos
Rumors of humanity in Patrice Nganang's Dog Days
Identitarian Flux and Urban Mobility in A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass
Next steps and last words (in media res)
Bibliography
Chapter 10 Climates of Uncertainty (Patterson, Chamoiseau, Saulter, and KSR)
Rastafarian Environmentalism in Orlando Patterson's Children of Sisyphus
Creole environmentalism in Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco
Techno-environmental futures in Stephanie Saulter's (R)Evolution Trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson's climate fictions and the end(s) of capitalism
Some tactical conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 11 Executive Summary and Closing Remarks (Soft Eyes)
Looking back
Looking ahead
Bibliography
Index
