Planning relies on the strict classification and disposition of things in space. Intended to establish and maintain order, planning’s classifying practices are reinforced by binarisms that revolve around legality/illegality. The article deploys Bauman’s notion of the ‘stranger’ to recast hostility to informality as a symptom of antipathy against strangerhood and ambivalence. Drawing from qualitative research in urban Zimbabwe, I posit that because informality cannot be pigeonholed as either ‘friend’ or ‘enemy’, it instils a sense of unease in planners. I argue that this is a failure of the pursuit of order through binary antagonisms and contend that fixation with binarisms spawns ‘spatial undecidables’ and fuels resentment against informality. I propose that the notion of strangerhood complements and extends the concept of ‘gray spacing’.
AminAThriftN (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge: Polity.
2.
AvniNYiftachelO (2014) The new divided city? Planning and ‘gray space’ between global north-west and south-east. In: ParnellSOldfieldS (eds) The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 487–505.
3.
BalibarÉ (2006) Strangers as Enemies: Further Reflections on the Aporias of Transnational Citizenship. Globalization Working Papers 06/4. Hamilton, ON: IGHC, McMaster University.
BaumanZ (2016) Strangers at Our Door. Cambridge: Polity.
14.
BaumanZObirekS (2015) Of God and Man. Cambridge: Polity.
15.
BeckU (1996) How neighbors become Jews: the political construction of the stranger in an age of reflexive modernity. Constellations2(3):378–396.
16.
BermanM (1988) All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Penguin.
17.
BlackshawT (2003) Leisure Life: Myth, Masculinity and Modernity. London: Routledge.
18.
CleggS (2008) If people are strange, does organization make us normal? In: BarryDHansenH (eds) The SAGE Handbook of New Approaches to Organization Studies. London: SAGE Publishing, pp. 436–453.
19.
CresswellT (1996) In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
20.
DiproseR (1993) Nietzsche and the pathos of distance. In: PattonP (ed) Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–26.
21.
DouglasM (2002) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge.
22.
FreudS (2004) Civilization and Its Discontents. London: Penguin.
23.
Garland-ThomsonR (2011) Misfits: A feminist materialist disability concept. Hypatia26(3): 591-609.
24.
GiddensA (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
25.
GoZ (Government of Zimbabwe) (2005) Response by Government of Zimbabwe to the Report by the UN Special Envoy on Operation Murambatsvina/Restore Order. Harare: Government Printer.
26.
HughesB (2002) Bauman’s strangers: Impairment and the invalidation of disabled people in modern and post-modern cultures. Disability & Society17(5):571–584.
27.
JärvinenM (2003) Negotiating strangerhood: Interviews with homeless immigrants in Copenhagen. Acta Sociologica46(3):215–230.
28.
JonghL (2015) Street vending in urban Malawi: Strategies and practices of vendors and local authorities. RC21 International Conference Urbino, Italy, 27-29 August 2015. Available at: http://www.rc21.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/D2-Jongh.pdf (accessed 16 February 2017).
29.
KameteAY (1999) Restrictive control of urban high-density housing in Zimbabwe: Deregulation and challenges for urban design. Housing, Theory and Society16(3):136–151.
30.
KameteAY (2007) Cold-hearted, negligent and spineless? Planning, planners and the (r)ejection of ‘filth’ in urban Zimbabwe. International Planning Studies12(2):153–171.
31.
KameteAY (2008) Planning versus youth: stamping out spatial unruliness in Harare. Geoforum3(5):1721–33.
32.
KameteAY (2009) In the service of tyranny: Debating the role of planning in Zimbabwe’s urban ‘clean-up’ operation. Urban Studies46(4):897–922.
33.
KameteAY (2013) On handling urban informality in southern Africa. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography95(1):17–31.
34.
KameteAY (2016) ‘Programmed to serve’: Urban planning and elite interests in Zimbabwe. In: SilvaCN (ed) Governing Urban Africa. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 151–169
35.
KameteAY (2017) Pernicious assimilation: Reframing the integration of the urban informal economy in southern Africa. Urban Geography39(2):167–189.
36.
LefebvreH (1991) The Production of Space (Trans. Nicholson-SmithD.). Oxford: Blackwell.
37.
LutzoniL (2016) In-formalised urban space design: Rethinking the relationship between formal and informal. City, Territory and Architecture3(1):3–20.
38.
LegrandOYiftachelO (2014) Sovereignty, planning and gray space: Illegal construction in Sarajevo and Jerusalem. In: Chiodelli F CarliBDFallettiMScavuzzoL (eds) Cities to be Tamed? Spatial Investigations across the Urban South. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 215–236.
39.
MånssonN (2008) Bauman on strangers: unwanted peculiarities. In: JacobsenHMPoderP (eds) The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman: Challenges and Critique. London: Ashgate, pp. 155–171.
40.
MarottaV (2002) Zygmunt Bauman: Order, strangerhood and freedom. Thesis Eleven70(1):36–54.
41.
MoranLJSkeggsB (2004) Sexuality and the Politics of Violence and Safety. London: Routledge.
MYDEC (Ministry of Youth Development and Employment Creation) (undated) Employment Creation Department programmes. Available at: http://www.mydgec.gov.zw/eprogrammes.htm (accessed 7 August 2007).
44.
NjohAJ (2006) Planning Power: Town Planning and Social Control in Colonial Africa. London: UCL Press.
45.
NobleG (2005) The discomfort of strangers: Racism, incivility and ontological security in a relaxed and comfortable nation. Journal of Intercultural Studies26(1-2):107–120.
46.
PhelanS (2001) Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and Dilemmas of Citizenship. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
47.
PickeringM (2001) Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation. Basingstoke: Palgrave
48.
PileS (1997) Introduction: Opposition, political identities and spaces of resistance. In: PileSKeithM (eds) Geographies of Resistance. London: Routledge, pp. 1–32.
49.
PottsD (2006) ‘Restoring order’? Operation Murambatsvina and the urban crisis in Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies32(2):273–291.
50.
PottsD (2008) The urban informal sector in sub-Saharan Africa: From bad to good (and back again?). Development Southern Africa25 (2):151–167.
51.
RumfordC (2016) The Globalization of Strangeness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
52.
SandercockL (2000) When strangers become neighbours: Managing cities of difference. Planning Theory and Practice1(1):13–30.
53.
SanyalR (2014) Urbanizing refuge: Interrogating spaces of displacement. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research38(2):558–572.
54.
SegalS (1998) The anxiety of strangers and the fear of enemies. Studies in Philosophy and Education17(4):271–282.
YiftachelO (2002) The dark side of modernism: Planning as control of an ethnic minority. In: BridgeGWatsonS (eds) The Blackwell City Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 535–541.
57.
YiftachelO (2009a) Theoretical notes on ‘gray cities’: The coming of urban apartheid?Planning Theory8(1):88–100
58.
YiftachelO (2009b) Critical theory and ‘gray space’: Mobilization of the colonized. City, 13(2-3):246–263.
59.
YiftachelO (2015) Epilogue—from ‘gray space’ to equal ‘metrozenship’? Reflections on urban citizenship. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research39(4):726–737.
