In the last twenty years, the city of Ahmedabad has converted the Sabarmarti riverside, once home tens of thousands of slum dwellers, into a public space for its residents. The Commissioner of Ahmedabad enthuses: "The worst part of the city, with flowing gutters and illegal constructions, has been converted into an iconic infrastructure project." But environmentalists, housing advocates, and former slumdwellers, remain perturbed.  The Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation spent approximately 16 million USD to build housing for those who would lose their home, but housing rights advocates assert that they managed a transition in a way that resulted in widespread, if temporary, homelessness and economic insecurity upon relocation. According to Beena Jadhav, "Not a single family walked from their houses by the river to the ones given by the government without a phase of being homeless. There were many demolitions without an eviction notice."

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The Haitian city of Canaan may be "one of the largest ungoverned spaces in the world," reports U.S. News and World Report. Haiti has not established Canaan as an independent, autonomous city or formalized land and property ownership since its creation in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Without legally established connections to the state, there is no mechanism by which the government can tax citizens, obligating them to provide roads, water, hospitals and other amenities.   Post-earthquake reconstruction officer Clement Belizaire warns of the severity of the situation and its consequences, noting that without formalized property and land ownership, this "largely-self governed city could become a slum where land barons fill the void."