Informal Housing which is often dismissed as squatter settlements constitutes a large component of the housing stock in the developing world. Scholars have often connected the emergence of such communities to the informal economy and the illegal takeover of land in the countries of the Global South. By the middle of the 20th century new approaches and policies that encourages the urban poor to engage in self-help housing have encountered limited success. This paper presents a critique of some of these ideas and attempts to theorize this bottom up urbanism through an understanding of the culture of its communities.