Chapter Five - Illegal House Construction in Peri-Urban Areas

Summary

This chapter covers issues of land and housing in peri-urban areas, which have experienced fast-paced industrial and infrastructure development. It examines the precariousness of urban dwellers, most of whom are migrants from other provinces to the city, who seek to build their own house to settle down and achieve a sense of stability in the city. There is an ongoing tension between these people’s sense of autonomy and their right to housing, and their sense of economic and political disadvantage in the land and housing markets, which are fraught with brokerage and corruption. The chapter investigates how these people engage in illegal construction activities, by building their houses on cheap, low-priced agricultural land that is not legally designated for residential purposes, to achieve stability. Yet as a result of their actions, these urban dwellers became trapped in precarious situations. Their settlement was subject to surveillance by the local authority and some people even lost their houses following government measures to crackdown on illegal construction.