City of Desire

Tanzil Shafique teaches at the University of Sheffield, UK, and is an Associate of the Urban Institute there. He is the Convenor of the the Southern Theorising Group (STingG) as well as co-lead of the Sheffield Design Lab. Tanzil’s research looks at informal cities and their adaptation to climate change, participatory spatial practices and decolonial/pluriversal thought. He recently won significant funding from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for a wetland revitalisation project. He also runs the Platform for Housing Justice, a grassroots activism infrastructure. He is co-author of Off-Grid Toilets (Altrim, 2022) and Atlas of Informal Settlements (Bloomsbury, 2023).

The arguments presented in the book, using a lucid narrative style, illuminate an understanding of Korali beyond the usual binaries and categories constructed through the normative taxonomies. Instead, Shafique provides a unique kaleidoscopic view of the adjustments, tactics, strategies, resistances, protocols, and maneuvered process by which the settlement is made as well as remade every day. This is a reading that does not privileges any one disciplinary lens and instead collapses, intersects, folds, interrogates hybridizes and synthesizes multiple perspectives to present a convincing way of seeing a form of urbanism in which half the urban population on the planet will possibly settle in the coming three decades.

• Introduction: Half the World at StakePART 1: Agents1. State: Another Hole in the Wall2. People: Why “The Community” Does Not Exist3. NGO: The Silent Partner4. Event: Shaped by FirePART 2: Arrangements5. Legitimacy: The Social Imperative6. Land: Lake? What a Load of Rubbish!7. Housing: A Desire for Six Arms8. Access: Through the Eye of a NeedlePART 3: Intensities9. Public Space: Fifty Shades of Publicness10. Functional Mix: Holy Cow!11. Governance: The Seventy GodfathersEpilogue: Bricolage, Bazaar, and Bog-boxAppendix: Dirty MethodsBibliography Index