The Dictionary of Human Geography

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sprawl Dispersed, low-density development

on the edges of urban areas, characterized by

fragmented andribbon development.Itis

often associated withedge citiesand with

bland, car-oriented and functionally segre-

gatedlandscapes. While sprawl is often asso-

ciated with a lack of planning, others suggest

that government policies and public agencies,

influencing decisions about road construction,

housing financing andzoning, for instance,

have shaped the rise of sprawling cities (e.g.

Wolch, Pastor and Dreier, 2004). ‘Sprawl’ is

also a highly political word, framing debate

over the loss of agricultural land and wildlife

habitat, the costs of automobile use, and

appropriate design and policy solutions

(Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck, 2000).em

Suggested reading

Wolch, Pastor and Dreier (2004).

squatting Dwelling in a home built on land

that does not belong to the builder, typically

without the consent of the land owner, in the

absence of formal planning and regulation. In

many countries in the world, a significant pro-

portion of the population lives in squatter

housing; for instance, this is the case for

roughly half of the residents in Istanbul or

Delhi. Squatter housing is typically built

quickly to establish ade factoclaim, and basic

infrastructureforwater, drainage, sanita-

tion, electricity and roads is at first missing.

Squatter settlements are often built on state-

owned land, located on the periphery of an

urban area (though relative centrality can

change as cities grow up to and around them),

or on unproductive land such as swamps,

saline flats or steep hillsides. Although squat-

ter housing exists outside private property

relations, it can be commodified and traded

(seecommodity;market): over one-third of

squatter housing in Turkey is rented, and in

Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s the sec-

ondary housing market in squatter dwellings

bore a striking resemblance to the parallel legal

real estate market (Smart, 1986). Although

most of the world’s squatting occurs in the

cities of the globalsouth, there have been

squatters’ movements in European and

North American cities, particularly in the

1970s and 1980s; at moments of housing

shortage, squatters occupied vacant buildings

without the consent of owners, to gain access

to affordable housing and often as a critique of

private property relations and urban restruc-

turing (Pruijt, 2003: see alsohomelessness;

slum).

In the late 1960s, academics studying the

global South began to reassess the earlier view

that squatter settlements were a ‘cancer on the

carapace of the city’ (quoted in Gonzalez de la

Rocha, Perlman, Safa, Jelin, Roberts and

Ward, 2004) or evidence of dysfunctional

urbanism. Studying settlements that had

‘consolidated’ over time, they stressed the

existence of social networks in squatter

communities and began to conceive of them

as rational and viable responses to rapid

urbanism, as a solution to rather than a prob-

lem of massive rural to urbanmigration. This

view continues to inform Hernando De Soto’s

(1989) influential celebration of the entrepre-

neurialism and capacity for self-organization

within squatter settlements (now taken up by

the World Bank). De Soto recommends that

propertyownership be extended to squatters

to facilitate their capacity to petition thestate

for more services and to use their property as

collateral to obtain loans, which then can be

used to improve their property or invest in

small businesses.

A critical literature has arisen to argue, first,

that consolidation and stabilization of squat-

ter communities can happen in the absence of

private property ownership (Varley, 2002)

and, second, that there are serious limits to

addressing issues ofpovertyand social mar-

ginalization through land titling and upgrades

to housing and urban infrastructure (Roy,

2005). Extending private property ownership

can lead togentrificationand displacement,

and the consolidation ofpatriarchalpower

relations (given that land title is typically

granted to the malehouseholdhead), and

there is little evidence that land title opens

assess to credit or alters employment condi-

tions (Gonzalez de la Rocha, Perlman, Safa,

Jelin, Roberts and Ward, 2004; Roy, 2005).

Among scholars fromlatin america, there is

less optimism now about the prospects for

those living in squatter settlements. The

structural adjustmentand austerity policies

of the 1980s followed by the neo-liberal

restructuring (see neo-liberalism) of the

1990s led to rising unemployment, declining

opportunities in informal sectors, the devolu-

tion of the delivery of social goods to non-

governmental organizations (see ngo), and

increasing – often drug-related –violence.

Perlman notes of Rio de Janeiro, ‘After many

decades ofco-existence,Rio’s populous has

again begun to fear and shun thefavelasdue

to a sharp increase in violence. Although the

favelados[residents of squatter communities]

themselves are no longer considered marginal,

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_S Final Proof page 719 1.4.2009 3:23pm

SQUATTING