In/formal reappropriations: Spatialised needs and desires in residential alleys in Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

This paper engages in critical debate with urban informality in interstitial urban spaces through the lens of micro-scalar spatial practices motivated by everyday needs and desires. The aim is to examine the generative potential of small-scale reappropriations to change the functions, meanings and governing policies of undervalued urban spaces. An empirical focus is taken on residential alleys in inner-city neighbourhoods of Melbourne, Australia. Remnants of 19th-century sanitation and drainage infrastructure, these alleys are now underdetermined spaces of manifold functions and meanings. Drawing from extensive fieldwork documentation and interviews, this study maps and interrogates the interplay of formal and informal spatial practices. Formal practices, driven by assertion of authority rather than vision for public space, operate like Bourdieu’s habitus. Informal practices, driven by everyday needs and desires, have a teleoaffective dimension that can modify the social field in which these dispositions are formed and thereby alter habitus.