This dissertation examines how urban floodplains are governed and contested in Asunción, Paraguay, focusing on the Bañados—riverine communities portrayed as informal, precarious, and out of place. Drawing on multi-year ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis proposes the concept of (un)settling urbanization to analyze how riverfront redevelopment, legal–fiscal regimes, and environmental governance seek to settle urban space while simultaneously unsettling historically rooted forms of dwelling and belonging in the floodplains. Centered on the Costanera Norte and Sur avenues and the emergence of rights-of-nature frameworks, the study argues that these interventions do more than reorganize infrastructure; they transform the very “nature of rights.” Claims grounded in dwelling, cyclical mobility, and collective labor confront an environmental and legal order that recasts inhabited wetlands as ecological reserves, fiscal assets, or zones of risk. Floodplains are reframed as “nature” requiring protection, while residents are rendered provisional or removable. Against narratives of informality, the dissertation reconceptualizes the Bañados as historically rooted socio-ecological formations—(un)settled urban commons—where human and more-than-human life persist through seasonal flooding, incremental construction, and collective organization. Tracing governance across infrastructure, property law, and conservation policy, it shows how urban order is pursued through fragmentation and moral–ecological classification. Riverfront redevelopment thus unsettles not only settlements, but the political grounds of belonging, legitimacy, and justice.
