Polarizing informality: Processual thinking,materiality and the emerging middle-class informality in Taipei

Thinking formal/informal binary

The concept of urban informality is often discussed in terms of private ownership and urban planning. From the perspective of private ownership, informality is employed to describe housing with no proper legal entitlement. This lack of entitlement may result in squatters’ lack of access to capital markets, further impoverishing those who often dwell informally due to their poverty in the first place (De Soto, 2000). That said, cases in Bogota, Turkey and Mexico have shown that land titling makes little difference for the poor in accessing formal finance (see Gilbert, 2002). Furthermore, land titling could even induce gentrification due to the increase in land value (Payne et al., 2009; Varley, 2016). Besides legal status, urban informality is also identified by its unorganized forms, as non-designated uses of space by humans. Urban planners thus distinguish urban informality from formal dwellings, seeing it as the unorthodox, unplanned parts of urban development (Hall and Pfeiffer, 2000). Such a perspective has since been challenged by scholars influenced by the post-colonialist tradition. With the ‘Southern turn’ in urban studies, the predominately Euro-American-centric urban theories therefore extended their focus to less attended issues, in less attended cities (McFarlane, 2008; Robinson, 2005, 2006; Roy, 2009a). Urban informality hence provides a grounded view of cities, scrutinizing them from the view of people’s daily struggles with poverty, local regulations, and state power (Roy, 2009c; Roy and AlSayyad, 2004). From a planning point of view, it reveals the different forms of public intervention on human habitation. As Roy and AlSayyad (2004: 5) famously argued, ‘If formality operates through the fixing of value, including the mapping of spatial value, then informality operates through the constant negotiability of value and the unmapping of space’. Informality facilitated by the state or planning professionals could be incorporated into formal housing development as a way of alleviating poverty, compensating for the lack of state housing strategy in the urban sprawl (Fairbanks, 2011; Soliman, 2010). Therefore, neither legalizing nor penalizing illegal land occupation can offer a full solution to deal with informality (van Gelder, 2013). These works invite us to think about how informality is a result of strategic enforcement of state power. As Roy (2009b: 10) further argued, ‘Informality then is not a set of unregulated activities that lies beyond the reach of planning; rather it is planning that inscribes the informal by designating some activities as authorized and others as un-authorized, by demolishing slums while granting legal status to equally illegal suburban developments’. By strategically deploying differentiated juridical interventions, states can deploy the formal–informal distinction to sustain the power or interest of urban authorities. In this sense, informality is not just a pre-given legal status that exists beyond the control of state power, but is instead a state operation of power and control (Porter, 2011).

Besides the state’s strategic deployment of the formal–informal dichotomy, informality is at the same time the ways urban life is invented, practised and lived by people. In the words of McFarlane and Waibel (2012), besides understanding urban informality as a spatial categorization, an organizational form or a governmental tool, urban informality could also be examined as a negotiable value, through which people can, ‘sift and sort through their hopes and desires’ (McFarlane and Waibel, 2012: 6). Urban informality is a mutual process that reflects the needs of local governments and planning professionals, as well as local people. As shown in the case of Delhi, middle-class associations play a major role in licensing and managing waste-pickers and street hawkers, blurring the formal–informal distinction to attain the services they desire (Schindler, 2017). The formal–informal relation is being constantly stretched, distorted and challenged through this negotiation process. In that case, examining the formation process of formal–informal relations reveals the daily interactions between people, government and the physical environment.

Informality as negotiating processes

In order to further investigate the formal–informal relation, Boudreau and Davis’s (2017) recent work calls for more processual thinking of informality so as to challenge the formal–informal dichotomy. To them, thinking of informality as a process is a way to think of how informality and formality were produced to fulfil the needs of the state and the people, and how legality and tolerance were unevenly granted by the state under different circumstances (Davis, 2017). On that account, informality is no longer the state failures often found in third-world countries. Rather, it is the state’s attempt to contain unplanned, illegal dwellings while minimizing confrontation. It pushes regulations to transform in accordance with the miscellaneous social norms while metamorphosing with them (Hilbrandt et al., 2017).

With processual thinking, the informal–formal relations can therefore no longer be treated as fixed conditions that are decided by legality and urban planning, nor are they simply results of poverty. Rather, informality should be examined in terms of how it was produced and sustained through people’s experimental practices of dwelling and a state’s intentional misconduct of law. For instance, the cases of sidewalks in Abu Dhabi and informal night markets in Singapore have demonstrated how migrant workers from the same ethnic background (or not) mobilize urban public spaces (e.g. sidewalks, street corners and markets) as places to meet, trade, and linger so they can find their sense of community in the cities (Elsheshtawy, 2011, 2013; Yeo and Heng, 2014; Yeo et al., 2012). Informality hence provides a perspective to comprehend how urban migrants behave in unplanned ways in undesignated spaces to survive, to fit themselves into a globalized urban life and, accordingly, become part of the contemporary urban landscape.

In Vancouver, informality is formed through the uneven process of the legal formalization of basement apartments. Since the state had to meet the increasing demand for housing, maintain living standards and keep the city from sprawling, the legality of basement apartments has been changed by the state (Mendez and Quastel, 2015). Informality in the case of Tent City in Seattle first appeared as a homeless people’s political protest, then gradually became a self-governed space wherein squatters produced and performed their citizenship (Sparks, 2017). In these cases, informality is not just the product of poverty. People are no longer regarded as mere objects to be governed by the state. Rather, they are the subject that actively produces informality. Informality is thus formed through migrant workers’ availing themselves to public spaces and local politicians’ uneven legalization of basement apartments due to different needs. In this process, squatters took into account their disability and hardship, making the space more accessible to them, creating a localized form of citizenship. Under the circumstances, not only processual thinking delineates the way informality was co-produced by people’s use of spaces and the state’s regulation, but it also mutates as it encounters the emergence of new construction materials and political realities.

Materiality and the variegation of illegal construction forms

Beside the power relations that sustain informality, informality is also shaped into different physical forms upon its encounter with materiality. Since informality often appears in the form of illegal constructions, it is often produced through people’s interactions with their living environment, public infrastructures and construction materials. Dovey and King (2011) developed a typology of squatter settlements to conceptualize the relation between illegal constructions and other urban components, or to put it simply, how squatter settlements grow. For instance, waterfronts in tropical cities such as those in Bangkok, Manila and Surabaya, are common spaces for squatter settlements to be situated. Since these spaces are exposed to flooding, storms and tsunamis, they have often previously been considered unsafe for formal settlements. The buffer zones adjacent to major infrastructures, such as railways or sewers, have often been deemed as unused, or leftover spaces, and are thus utilized by squatters for encroachments. The spaces at the back of formal buildings hidden from the public gaze often become squatter settlements, as the seclusion makes these settlements much less visible. This is particularly important to squatters in strong states like China and Vietnam, where the visibility of informality is politically sensitive.

Informality could therefore be understood as people’s ways of space-making by interacting with different materialities. Squatters make spaces for their homes by enduring the risk of natural disasters, fitting themselves into the smallest, leftover spaces of infrastructures and inserting themselves at the back of existing formal buildings. These cases demonstrate how the materiality of informality conditions the whereabouts of informal constructions, making illegal dwelling possible for squatters. Besides, different materialities also show different levels of stability of squatter settlements, and consequently trigger different responses from local governments.

For the case of toilets in Mumbai, McFarlane et al. (2014) stress how squatters facing acute threats of demolition tended to build their makeshift toilets with cloth, timber, jute and sheet iron, materials that are cheaper and simpler. Once the squatter settlements had not been demolished for several years, the sense of impending demolition faded away, and squatters would build their toilets in a more stable, permanent form. Squatters in Lisbon developed new ways of avoiding government detection when upgrading illegal buildings: they built new brick walls inside wooden shacks in order to hide constructions from the municipal survey (Ascensão, 2015). These cases point to how the selection of materials (temporal or stable) and the ways in which these materials are applied (hidden or visible) contribute to the formation of urban informality. On that account, illuminating the agency of materials does not mean evacuating meaningful political content by treating everything as equally significant (or equally insignificant) (Storper and Scott, 2016). Rather, stressing the materiality of informality offers a clear view of how certain forms of informality were made possible. It is the threat of flooding that strips the waterfront of other possible land uses, making illegal dwelling possible. The formal façade makes informal constructions less visible, sparing them from being recognized as direct disobedience of the state’s land regulations. The wooden boards make the shacks appear less permanent, and less urgent for the local governments to deal with. In that sense, stressing the materiality does not rule out the importance of the state, poverty and regulation. Instead, it demonstrates the nuances of how squatters acquire their lands, how illegal constructions were spared from immediate demolition and, more importantly, why both squatters and the state accept such forms of informality. Therefore, informality functions through consent. It creates a state of ambiguity that allows people to accommodate themselves with limited resources, at the same time reserving the state’s right to the lands for possible alternatives in the future. In short, it provides ad hoc solutions for squatters and the state.

Besides making sense of how cities came to be, bringing materiality into conversations also reveal inequalities in urban governance. For instance, cases from Mumbai show that informality could reinforce existing gender and class inequalities. Informal communities having limited access to public sanitation systems means people must choose between costly private toilets, deteriorated public toilets or public defecation. Women who cannot afford private toilets usually have to go to secluded places in search of privacy. This makes them vulnerable to sex crimes and harassment (Desai et al., 2015). Therefore, bringing materiality into the discussion does not mean to fetishize inanimate objects of matters, leaving the ‘underlying process’ unattended, as in Storper and Scott’s (2016) critique of assemblage urbanism. Instead, it hopes to connect with different ways of thinking, be that Marxism, post-colonialism or structuration (Dovey et al., 2018). In doing so, it actually sheds new light on the critical urban imaginary (McFarlane, 2011), illuminating different forms of inequality in urban informality.

Investigating the transforming informality

In order to excavate how informality is co-produced by state governance and people’s lives, the case study of this paper thus investigates the formation of Taipei’s informality on two levels. First, on the governing level: what are the driving forces of informality in Taipei? What are the reasons driving people to build and live in illegal constructions? Why does the state govern these illegal constructions in ways that deviate from the existing laws? Second, on the forms of illegal construction, how have the forms of illegal construction variegated under the existing political realities and ways of urban living? How does this variegation affect the state’s governance of illegal constructions?

To answer these questions, I conduct research on Taipei’s squatter settlements and illegal constructions. Given that the informality is a common part of Taipei, I therefore focus on the formation of informality in Taipei Metropolitan. This research is based on my field work from 2011 to 2012. To better understand how informal constructions were built and the ways of living in the illegal constructions, I visited the squatter houses in the Liu-Gong channel settlement – a waterfront squatter settlement of more than 100 households on the fringe of Taipei County (now New Taipei City). With the help of local residents, I was able to understand the history and spatial layout of this squatter settlement. A total of 11 open-ended interviews were conducted in this settlement. By interviewing the squatters, I was able to learn why these squatter houses were built, by whom these houses were built and how they were tolerated by the local authorities through the years. In order to understand how the local government perceives illegal constructions, and people’s responses to the changing ways of government, 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted with local government officers, planning experts and the neighbouring residents. Also, to better understand the trajectory of the governance of illegal constructions, I cross-referenced the changes of construction regulations with old news from news databases to see how informality transforms upon its encounter with new regulations, building materials and political realities. The interviews were conducted in Chinese and were later translated into English by the author.

Patronizing urban squatters: authoritarianism and the housing crisis of Taipei, 1950s–1960s

Urban informality first emerged in Taiwan as the state’s response to the surge of housing demand in the 1950s. After defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the KMT regime led by Chiang Kai-Shek fled to Taiwan with over 1.2 million mainland migrants (also known as mainlanders). Many of these mainlanders settled in the capital, Taipei City, increasing the population from around 270,000 to 500,000 by 1949 (Chen, 2010). The sudden increase in population created high demand for housing. Accommodation provided by the government was scarce, and only soldiers who came with families, or those of higher rank, were allocated lodgings. ¹ Under the circumstances, squatter settlements in public lands, such as graveyards or floodplains, became a common solution for people without proper accommodation plans. For instance, squatter houses at the waterfront of the Liu-Gong channel are part of the burgeoning squatter settlements of this period. Since there were some pieces of land by the channel that remained vacant at that time, some squatters levelled the lands and settled there. Over time, over 100 households were built at the waterfront. Granny Wang (pseudonym) was one of the earliest squatters in this settlement. She and her husband started dwelling by the channel shortly after he got a new job as an associate in the military camp nearby. As the authoritarian regime could not provide proper accommodation for its people, it had no choice but to allow such informal dwellings, though it was illegal at the time. As Granny Wang told me during our interview:

When we moved here, we had to dig the dirt from the higher ground to fill the lower ground in order to make enough room for our house. While we were digging, Chiang Ching-Kuo once came here, commanded the soldiers [from the camp] to transport rocks for our construction with their trucks. For that reason, I always tell them it was Chiang Ching-Kuo who permitted us to build the house.

According to a government report published in 1964, one-third of Taipei citizens lived in informal settlements (Chen, 2010). Though the state chose not to penalize informal squatting, this does not mean that governance was withdrawn from informal settlements. With the enforcement of national censuses, these squatter settlements were listed, gradually gained access to tap water, electricity and house numbers, and were even levied for housing tax. In this sense, not pursuing the violation of the Building Act was a meticulous urban strategy to cope with the lack of housing, a way to govern squatter settlements. This ‘patronized informality’ of squatter settlements was later further codified with new rules. At that time, Taipei was undergoing rapid urbanization – new urban plans and infrastructure were laid out across the city. Since most squatter settlements were on public land, they were often targets of land acquisition. The regulation for squatter settlements was first put into words in 1957 to serve the need for urbanization at that time. According to the Management of Illegal Constructions released by the Ministry of the Interior, any new construction that violated the Building Act would be stopped or demolished if needed. Local governments were able to relocate any existing squatter settlements if they violated urban planning rules, threatened public safety or hindering public traffic and sanitation. To avoid the demolition turning into a new housing crisis, the new rule also stated that squatters would receive some compensation or be rehoused if their houses were confiscated. This Management of Illegal Constructions therefore became the new rule lived by both squatters and the governing authority. To the local government, this new rule turned the judicial power of the state over squatter settlements into written codes, strengthening the legitimacy of demolishing the squatter huts. For squatters, though the relocations may have been seen as a threat, the hope of being relocated into formal houses also prevented them from slipping into despair.

Informality at this stage appeared mainly in the form of squatter settlements. These squatter settlements were tacitly permitted by the state as a means of governance in response to the severe lack of housing policies. In other words, this patronized informality was mediated by the political patronage between KMT’s authoritarian state and the mainlander squatters. The authoritarian state was therefore able to mobilize political support from mainlander squatters. However, as Taipei had further urbanized, new forms of illegal construction had also been developed, leading to variegation of the illegal construction forms.

The variegation of illegal construction forms

While the state’s intentionally inactive action on squatter settlements has stabilized its support from the urban squatters, this inaction also fostered new forms of illegal construction. During Taipei’s urbanization, new building types and materials emerged in the city, and so has the forms of illegal construction. As industrial development drew many urban migrants to Taipei, urban spaces became more precious and illegal home improvements widely emerged in the city. Since apartments became popular in the city, this form of congregated building provided convenient and affordable housing to the newcomers, facilitating further urban development in Taipei. The emergence of this new form of building not only meant an increase in housing supply, but also the birth of a new style of living. The residents of these flats had to learn to adjust their ways of living to these apartments, at the same time adjusting these flats to suit their previous lifestyles. For instance, as inhabitants of a subtropical island, people in Taiwan were used to drying their clothes in their yards. Once they had moved into flats, they had to dry their clothes on small patios. This new flat life also provided a weaker sense of community. People often found themselves vulnerable to crimes like burglary, or feeling insecure regarding their lives and possessions. Also, with their different architectural characters, the top floors of apartments were often hot in the summer and leaked on rainy days. Therefore, when sheet iron became available due to the development of the steel industry in the late 1970s, people started to use it to change their living conditions. For those who worried about burglary, grates on windows provided a sense of security; for those who needed more space for air-drying or planting, iron brackets on patios offered additional room for drying their clothes or putting more plants out; for those who lived on the top floor, an attached sheet iron rooftop could shield them from heat and water leakage, or even provide more living space (Figure 1). Since the modifications could be achieved cheaply and quickly, and to high standards, this kind of illegal improvement to buildings became a common solution in urban spaces.

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Figure 1.

Grates on windows provided the sense of security for people who were new to apartment life. Attached sheet iron rooftops shielded people who lived on the top floor from heat and water leaks.

With loose regulations and no regulatory commission in place until 1995, this unplanned, unsolicited home improvement catered to different needs. Therefore, once arranged, methodical apartments could gradually evolve into a mosaic structure, assembled with attachments of different colours, materials and purposes. For households with limited budgets for house leakage problems, a simple iron sheet attached to the exterior wall could be a cheap fix for their indoor space; for upper-middle-class households, aluminium windows could provide extra inches to their living space while being aesthetically acceptable (Figure 2); for landlords seeking to maximize their profits, rooftop attachments could be turned into rooms to let. Therefore, though flats in the city might be planned and built under the same standards and designs, they are tailored to the different needs and tastes of people living in them. In addition to being cheap and accessible, the short construction time of this lightweight steel construction also facilitates an incremental means of informal extension. The illegal constructions can be built without being caught in the act. Even after they are reported to local authorities and torn down, the same building materials can be reassembled within a short time while waiting for the next demolition, which can be years later.

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Figure 2.

Aluminium windows provide extra living spaces while being aesthetically acceptable for upper-middle-class households.

Illegal home improvements therefore became the urban scenery that dominated the city’s appearance, the common living experiences of all citizens, whether rich or poor, living in the centre or the periphery. This materiality of sheet iron thus facilitated the popularization of illegal add-ons, making informality part of everyday life in Taipei. The huge number of these illegal home improvements resulted in a public opinion that strongly supported these informal landscapes, and paved the way for the intertwining of urban informality and populism during democratization.

Democratization and populist informality

As described earlier, Taiwan’s urban informality first emerged under the authoritarian government of the KMT regime. It was operated through the state’s desire to patronize urban squatters, especially those in squatter settlements. However, as Taipei has further urbanized, the forms of illegal construction have also variegated. This makes informality no longer merely a part of the urban squatters’ lives, but also a common lived experience of people of different economic status. This popularization of illegal construction led to a demographic change of illegal construction owners, and therefore facilitated the transformation of informality in Taipei. During Taiwan’s democratization in the 1980s, the old patron–client relation between the KMT regime and urban squatters was severely challenged by the changing political reality. With the lifting of martial law and the founding of a new opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), people learned to leverage the government’s action on illegal buildings with their ballots. For instance, many local politicians started offering to expunge the local government’s budget for demolishing illegal constructions so they could win support from the electorate. This could be understood as a populist strategy employed to govern illegal urban construction. Politicians of the opposition started to appeal to their supporters on a non-institutionalized and personal basis (Hsu, 2011). As illegal construction is extremely common in urban households, offering to stop the demolition of illegal construction would mobilize support across different classes. This populist strategy was not just employed by the opposition party, but was later even adopted by the KMT regime. For instance, the KMT called off all the demolition plans in 1983 after a census in 1981 showed that their candidates received lower support wherever illegal buildings had been demolished. The informality that once operated through patron–client relations was gradually transforming into a populist informality, which operates through the mutually beneficial relationship between illegal construction owners and local politicians. While the populist political reality had stabilized Taipei’s informality, sustaining the state’s inaction on illegal constructions, it consequently led to the rapid growth of illegal constructions. While squatters and private property owners learned to mobilize local politicians to sustain their homes and attachments, entrepreneurs that built golf courses, driving schools, factories and exhibition sites with no development permits also worked with politicians to make sure their illegal buildings were removed from the demolition list. As a result, the number of illegal constructions soared in this period. More than 13,000 new illegal constructions were built from 1991 to 1994 (Yang, 1995a). In short, the populist local politics had aggravated the situation of illegal construction. Given that illegal constructions were rarely penalized by the local authorities, they proliferated, creating an even stronger political barrier to penalizing them. However, this does not mean illegal constructions have been growing without limit since then. Rather, in order to unfold new urban development projects, though the populist informality remains dominant in urban governance, different illegal construction forms were treated differently by the local governments.

The emergence of ‘middle-class informality’

Though Taipei’s informality was still operating through populism, the governance of illegal buildings had diverged along the variegation of illegal construction forms. Since illegal constructions have expanded from the urban scene of squatter settlements to the common urban experience of all urban inhabitants, this demographic change of illegal urban construction has furthermore transformed the governance of illegal buildings. Compared to the support of urban squatters and the owners of large illegal facilities, the support of middle-class citizens with illegal add-ons has become more important for local politicians. Therefore, when DPP Chen Shui-Bian assumed the mayoral office in 1994, he pledged to postpone all demolition of small, illegal constructions. In his opinion, small illegal home improvements were the result of people’s needs, and so they should be spared demolition. As for the large illegal buildings owned by the rich and powerful, as they affected the city’s development more, they should be moved to the top of the demolition list. As a potent challenger to the KMT regime, Chen positioned himself as the spokesperson for ordinary citizens, aligning himself with them, especially the middle classes. Mayor Chen ordered that demolition be postponed for illegal constructions of less than 30 m², and focused on taking down bigger illegal constructions. This policy hugely favoured middle-class private property owners. Since their illegal home improvements were normally small extensions on patios or rooftops, they were less likely to be targeted for demolition. While this policy did mobilize strong support from middle-class citizens, at the same time it fuelled the growth of illegal add-ons.

While the government workforce was focusing on tackling down large illegal constructions, small illegal buildings were intentionally disregarded. What is worse, as the owners of these large illegal constructions all had strong connections to local politicians, some even being vote brokers or relatives of city councillors (mostly but not exclusively KMT), taking them down was not an easy task. As a result, the demolition rate dropped from 57% to around 40% (Yang, 1995b). This setback made the city government recast its policy. In the new Operation Directions for the Management of Illegal Construction (hereafter ODMIC) that the Taipei city government announced in 1995, the city government postponed all demolition of illegal constructions that were built before 1994, while concentrating its labour force on controlling new illegal buildings. In the new order, the government set up a system for dealing with illegal constructions: those that were built after 1995, violated urban planning, threatened public safety or breached the public sanitation code should be demolished first. In other words, constructions built before 1994 would only be demolished if they were reported as threatening public security, or if they were obstructing urban redevelopment plans. While this new rule slightly tightened up controls over new illegal constructions, it provided more protection for existing small add-ons. Since the illegal extensions built by private property owners were normally smaller, they were less likely to be incorporated in urban redevelopment plans. In other words, ODMIC is an indefinite postponement of small illegal home improvements. It made sure that most illegal add-ons were spared demolition. They could be used and traded as if they were a part of the formal construction. This new rule hit squatters particularly hard. Since the squatter settlements were often large agglomerations, their extent was often too great to be disregarded in urban redevelopment plans.

The divergence of governance between different illegal construction forms thus favours small illegal constructions, specifically the small add-ons made by middle-class property owners. The squatter settlements were often targeted for demolition, making space for urban redevelopment projects. That way, the local government contained the expansion of illegal construction, preventing more illegal squatter houses from being built, and at the same time avoiding provoking its middle-class supporters. The populist informality, which negotiates through the relations between local politicians and illegal construction owners, has thus transformed into ‘middle-class informality’, which negotiates specifically through the populist relations between local politicians and private property owners. Since then, this middle-class informality has been dominating the governance of illegal construction in Taipei.

Extra room for sale: growing illegal home improvements

Since ODMIC officially postponed the demolition of illegal constructions built before 1994, most illegal constructions were tolerated by the government if they continued to be no threat to public security, public sanitation or the development of public infrastructure. Under the circumstances, small illegal add-ons were constructed as part of private properties. They were traded and rented out in the private housing market, and even became selling points for many properties. On real-estate websites, illegal extensions built on patios were characterized as additional rooms for family members of potential buyers. Illegally converted backyards were turned into enlarged kitchens to cater to buyers with cooking demands. Rooms built with sheet iron on the rooftops were made out to be penthouses belonging to the top-floor owners of the apartments. They could be used as extra storage, entertaining spaces or even be let out to help with the mortgage. Although these add-ons never made part of written contracts, their potential value would still be reflected in both asking and sale prices. In other words, not only were the illegal home improvements spared from the danger of demolition, but they were also well connected to the private housing market, and often created a good profit margin for their owners. This made illegal extension widespread in city households. As a government officer characterized the issue in our interview:

The real question is not ‘Who has illegal constructions in their houses?’, but ‘Who doesn’t have illegal constructions in their houses?’.

While illegal home improvements were favoured by middle-class informality, squatter settlements have been facing the threat of demolition due to urban redevelopment projects.

Squeezed squatter settlements

While informality became a privilege enjoyed by private property owners, squatter settlements were gradually eradicated under such middle-class-oriented informality. Since large squatter settlements, as previously stated, are usually situated in unused public spaces, such as reserved parklands, graveyards and waterfronts, they are often seen as being in the way of the unfolding of local infrastructure. That being the case, reclaiming the occupied public lands has become a common task to allow the unfolding of public infrastructure like water sanitation systems, parks and embankments. This land reclamation has often led to reduced living spaces for squatter settlements. For instance, in the case of the Liu-Gong channel squatter settlement, part of the settlement was demolished to make room for channel renovation. At this point, ODMIC had become the policy template for governing illegal constructions, and had been adopted by other municipal governments, including Taipei County Government. Therefore, ODMIC was employed to manage the demolition of the Liu-Gong channel squatter settlement. Through squatters’ collective efforts in negotiating with the local government, they and the local government both settled on demolishing only part of their settlement, which was mainly being used for storage, kitchens and communal spaces. Yet, this demolition still causes both financial and emotional impacts for the squatters. First, since most squatters from this settlement were mainlanders and urban migrants who have lived there for almost 50 years, they have become used to the environment and have decided to grow old here. Many squatters had even put their savings into the renovation of their houses. The partial demolition therefore damaged the work on their houses without compensation. This was the case for Granny Chou’s (pseudonym) home. Granny Chou and her family have been making this settlement their home for more than 40 years. They had already spent a fortune remodelling their home, and Chou complained that the demolition was a huge financial loss:

If we knew they are to tear our house down, we wouldn’t have remodelled the houses. This renovation cost us a fortune!.