Greening informality through metabolic coordination: An urban political ecology of governing extralegal housing forms in Taiwan

Abstract

Despite its significance in informing inclusive political interventions in informal settlements in different political economic contexts, the urban informality literature falls short in exploring state intervention in or policy responses towards desire-based informal housing forms characterised by extralegal construction. This article uses Kaohsiung City in Taiwan as a case study to explore how the local government has collaborated with the private sector to govern the extralegal construction prevailing in community buildings. These interventions include the use of rooftop solar power systems aimed at remodelling existing buildings and green building design prototypes created to prevent future informalities. Using an urban political ecology lens, I analyse how the municipality appropriates the values and properties of solar power systems and green architecture to unite actors, relating extralegal construction to urban metabolism. I develop the concept of ‘metabolic coordination’ to show how the state coordinates actors, resources, technologies and capital to embed an internal circuit of funding flows governing extralegal construction in a larger external circuit of capital circulation consisting of growing solar photovoltaic and green housing markets. The adopted lens of urban political ecology interrogates three interrelated aspects of embedding informality in renewed urban space: municipal interventions remaking informalities, property-led greening of informalities and its negotiation, and inequality in accessing interventions. The city uses pragmatic and adaptive approaches to control extralegal construction. These approaches allow the city to leverage informality for growth and sustainability. However, the governing schemes create new forms of injustice and inequality.