Housing Informality beyond The Urban Poor: Spatialities, Public Institutions, and Social Injustice in Rich Settlements of Bogotá

Informality has been profoundly depicted and characterized in academic literature, nevertheless, it does not count with a single universally accepted definition. Decades after the formulation of this concept, and despite extensive research on diverse backgrounds and countries worldwide, informality is still strongly bonded to specific settings and locations: the urban poor in the Global South. This document challenges the persistent and often pervasive notion of poverty as a cause of informality and aims to understand the nature of informal housing of the rich. For this purpose, the spread of informal luxury villas in the eastern hills of Bogotá (Colombia) is explored as a case study through a wide range of qualitative methods. This study provides different perspectives on the phenomenology of housing informality of the rich by highlighting its underlying features such as the urban form, the role of public agents and the presence of informal institutions. Some of these features have been previously explored in other contexts worldwide, however, they remain scarcely investigated on informal housing of upper-income groups. Finally, this thesis offers a complete picture of the structural reasons that lie behind this type of informality and how they can influence the dynamics of planning law and processes.