Cómo nombrar a la informalidad urbana: Una revisión de las definiciones en uso, sus implicaciones analíticas y su alcance

Villas, asentamientos, barriadas, slums, shantytowns: What are the definitions we have chosen to talk about the informal city, and what sense do we assign when using them? A challenge regarding the terms used refers to communication: this becomes particularly evident in international congresses. For example, to what urban spaces do we refer exactly when we say villa? What are the commonalities between different conceptualizations such as the Argentine, Colombian and Peruvian ones? Are the terms 'shantytown' or 'slum' relevant in the Latin American debate? What does the term 'informal' refer to in 'urban informality': to a legal condition, an urban planning one, or an aesthetic one? A second challenge, moreover, is to trace or question the very borders of the concept in order to continue advancing with the expansion of the disciplinary field while maintaining clarity in the analysis. The definition, for example, becomes crucial when it comes to tracing the origins of the villas of Buenos Aires. This paper aims to briefly review the definitions and conceptualizations of the informal city that have been developed and used so far in order to give greater precision to our analyzes. This revision includes both international and Argentine literature, although it focuses on the case of Buenos Aires given that its ultimate interest is to discuss the historical antecedents of informality in that city in the longer run.