SPACE TALKS I Urban Informality: A Persistent Matter of Concern

The ‚Space Talks‘ zines emerged from a digital lecture series of the same name that sought to initiate a dialogue with guest speakers to explore diverse perspectives, concepts and approaches to spatial thinking and the study of socio-spatial change. The series also aimed to critically examine the dominant institutional structures, norms and practices within which spatial research has been conducted across various scientific disciplines. The zine format offered an opportunity to continue this dialogue in a playful and deeply collaborative way that subverts traditional academic publishing models. The themes range from informality and de/coloniality to challenges to dominant understandings and representations of place and spatiality. Here, different social, political and cultural locations and contexts are not simply taken as ‚case studies‘; rather, they have spawned theories and concepts that critically contest, extend, and redress commonly used spatial concepts. Each zine makes clear that, to understand the complexity of spatial ontologies, orders and actions that may confront or offer alternatives to modernist spatial figures, research perspectives and practices must be decentered. This issue of the SPACE TALKS zine critically explores how the neglect of informality as a concept can obscure complex mechanisms of urban life at the theoretical margins in the Global South. Find the full essay here: https://sfb1265.de/einblicke/multimodale-formate/space-talks/urban-informality/