Using COVID-19 as a lens to examine assumptions about urban informality

This article examines some key concepts that dominated academic discussion of the likely impact of COVID-19 on informal settlements. The literature identified various factors including, inter alia density, crowding, overcrowding and connectivity, used singly and in various combinations, to inform predictions that COVID-19 would hit informal settlements harder than other urban forms. One proposed solution was for public health and urban planning to resume their partnership of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The article uses a South African informal settlement as a ‘reality check’ for analysing these diagnoses and proposed solutions. By using seroprevalence results from the same informal settlement and its formal surrounds, the article argues that in some cases informal settlements may have provided more protection from infection to residents than nearby (poor) formal areas, in contrast with all expectations.