The informal landscape of Greater Tunis: Residents’ resilience and the quest for the right to the city

Abstract

Informal urbanisation has developed in the peripheries of Tunis under specific socio- economic and institutional conditions. Public urban schemes have, at times, inadvertently contributed to the emergence of informal settlements, which were subsequently incorporated into urban plans during later revisions. The unregulated land market, initially a refuge for low-income households, has gradually expanded to include other social groups, attracted by the flexibility of transactions and the relative institutional tolerance. These dynamics reflect the shortcomings of land policies and the determination of residents to secure property ownership, even if it means circumventing formal legal frameworks. However, this situation raises several questions: Is it the result of limited awareness regarding regularisation procedures and costs or of public policies that long turned a blind eye to informal practices, which have since become structural? Despite the formal rigour of housing policies, their numerous shortcomings have enabled the expansion of illegal housing in the Tunisian peripheries. Long perceived as an urban aberration, this phenomenon reveals the capacity of residents to adapt, navigate institutional obstacles, and devise strategies for inhabiting the city. Confronted with ambiguous legal frameworks and governmental inertia, they have developed forms of urban resilience founded on ingenuity, solidarity, and territorial appropriation. This “urbanity of adaptation” is based on self-building, collective organisation, and mobilisation to improve their living environment. To investigate these dynamics, we adopted a systemic and multi-scalar approach connecting metropolitan trends, neighbourhood organisation, and everyday practices. We also mobilised narrative mapping, a qualitative method that links discourse, memory, and spatial representation. Forty open-ended interviews were conducted across four contrasting neighbourhoods, Douar Hicher, Ettadhamen, Soukra, and Goulette, alongside resident-produced maps identifying frequented, avoided, and problematic spaces. This combination of verbal and graphic data offers insight into spatial perceptions, local participation, and symbolic vulnerabilities. Several questions therefore arise: To what extent have residents succeeded in confronting the administrative and social constraints that marginalise them? Have public authorities, whether consciously or unconsciously, contributed to perpetuating this state of ambiguity? And, above all, how might the paradigm of the right to the city today support these dynamics and transform informal housing into a lever for urban regeneration?

Keywords

informal urbanization / peripheries of Tunis / land policies / urban resilience / right to the city

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