This book advances the agenda of informality as a transnational phenomenon, recognizing that contemporary urban and regional challenges need to be addressed at both local and global levels. This project may be considered a call for action. Its urgency derives from the impact of the pandemic combined with the effects of climate change in informal settlements around the world. While the notion of “the informal” is usually associated with the analysis and interventions in informal settlements, this book expands the concept of informality to acknowledge its interdisciplinary parameters.
The book is geographically organized into five sections. The first part provides a conceptual overview of the notion of “the informal, ” serving as an introduction and reflection on the subject. The following sections are dedicated to the principal regions of the Global South—Latin America, US–Mexico Borderlands, Asia, and Africa—while considering the interconnections and correspondencesbetween urbanism in the Global South and the Global North.
This book offers a critical introduction to groundbreaking theories and design practices of informality in the built environment. It provides essential reading for scholars, professionals, and students in urban studies, architecture, city planning, urban geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, economics, and the arts. As a critical survey of informality, the book examines history, theory, and production across a range of informal practices and phenomena in urbanism, architecture, activism, and participatory design. Authored by a diverse and international cohort of leading educators, theorists, and practitioners, 45 chapters refine and expand the discourse surrounding informal cities.
Table of Content
Introduction.- Part 1: Informalities – An overview.- Everything but housing.- Room by room: An exploration of the house.- Tactical appropriations in the urban realm: Informal practices and re-inventions in the contemporary city.- Milan potential city: Informality and resilience in times of crisis.- The mathematics of an ideal village.- Assembling informal urbanism.- Informalizing Yugoslavia.- Micro-informalities: Spatial appropriations in the Covid-19 Era.- Part 2: Latin America.- Red and Green: Towards a new framework of civilized coexistence.- No time to lose: Fostering the predominantly informal city in Latin America.- Exploring critical urbanities: A knowledge co-transfer approach for fragmented cities in water landscapes.- The practice of listening: Community learning towards a social architecture.- The limits of urban design in the slum-upgrading process: The case of Parque Fernanda I in São Paulo, Brazil.- Villa 31: Regeneration as a consequence of social urbanism.- El Amate in Guatemala City: An urban intervention.- Cuba’s informal gardens: Situating state support and public participation.- Urban permeability in Medellin: Case studies of Santo Domingo Savio and el Poblado.- Hopeful Rebar: Leveraging informality in architecture and urban design education.- Part 3: US–Mexico borderlands.- Lesson of hope: A case study on self-built homes in the informal neighborhoods of Tijuana.- Informality in South Texas: Understanding the evolution of Colonias in el Cenizo and the Rio Bravo.- Stigmas of informality: Disaster recovery and reconstruction in South Texas Colonias.- Quasi-informality on the border: The economic and socio-spatial dimensions of Latino marketplaces.- Houston, informal city.- Tanks, wells, tacos, and pitches.- Understanding informal housing in the Mississippi Delta: Lessons from Latin American informal settlements.- Part 4: Asia.- Understanding ‘free-form’ micro-morphology in informal settlements.- Informality and the production of publicness in India.- Desperate city builders.- (In)formal land delivery processes: Relational perspectives on squatter settlements in Kathmandu.- Meeting unmet expectations revisited: Environmental management in Indonesian urban Kampungs after 30 years.- Urban informality tactics through layers of socio-spatial connectivity.- Carnival nonmovements and the repoliticization of urban space in Yazd, Iran.- Popup cities: Refugee camps between transience and resilience.- Leveraging rural urbanisms: Design at the intersection of formality and informality in Xixinan, China.- Part 5: Africa.- Towards sustainable interventions in unplanned communities: Adapting the urban nexus approach to the Greater Cairo Region.- Power relations and the influence of cultural factors in Cairo’s Ashwa’eyat informal settlements.- Obscured innovations? Inventiveness in collective infrastructure management in Accra, Ghana.- The inclusion of “unequals:” Hotspot network strategy for a metropolitan agricultural revolution eluding informality.- Towards an architecture of civil disobedience in the upgrading of informal settlements.- Seeking disciplinary relevance in the informal city: Rebuilding architectural practice through community engagement.- Ponte city: An architecture of Utopia, informality, and rebirth.- Urban housing in Nairobi: Expectations and realities of densification in the middle- and low-income sectors.- Afterword.
About the author
Gregory Marinic, Ph.D., is an architectural theorist, scholar, educator, and practitioner. He is an associate professor in the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning SAID and Director of Urbania, a grant-funded research laboratory speculating on urban futures. His ongoing research examines cities in relation to obsolescence, informality, revitalization, adaptive reuse, publicness, and identity. Widely published in books and academic journals, his work seeks to advance critical discourse and interdisciplinary design practices that foster sustainability, resilience, and social justice.
Pablo Meninato, Ph.D., is an architect, architectural critic, and educator whose research focuses on the conception and development of the architectural project. He is an associate professor in the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. His current research investigates how various contemporary architects are developing original urban design tactics that enhance the quality of life in informal settlements across Latin America. A native of Argentina, Meninato has taught and practiced architecture in Philadelphia, Buenos Aires, and Monterrey. He has been widely published in books and journals across a range of topics in architecture and urbanism.
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