Demystifying Informal Urban Design and Planning

While more than half of the world's population live in cities, informal settlements or slums continue to expand. Concomitant with their worldwide expansion, however, we do not see urban designers and planners wanting to actively engage with the informality conundrum. This bookexplores the informality-urban design nexus, and why formal urban designers and planners have remained largely reluctant or prostrate to address those challenges facing our cities. One could ask what distinguishes the formal vs. informal urban design paradigms in the first place? Experience shows that compounding informality and urban design creates more confusion as opposed to dealing with each theme separately. While urban designers could at least pinpoint specific problems, i.e., walkability, gentrification, visual and economic decline, sense of place, meaning, in their pre-design problem definition stage, informal settlement problems prove inexorably complex, and harder to fathom to begin with. Therefore, seeking to demystify these epistemological ambiguities--while difficult--makes sense. Using abductive reasoning, regulations, aesthetics, and design epitomize formal while information, assets and adaptation characterize the multifarious attributes of informal urban planning and design. Besides these thematic differentiations, this book uses case studies to better contextualize and unpack the metaphorical distinctions of the two theoretical entities. Conceptualizing these two schools of thought this way, the book engages urban designers more into these debates, and explores how informal settlement residents see themselves, act collectively, care about their settlements, or leverage opportunities. The book ends with some observations on avoiding two potential pitfalls surrounding discussions on urban design and informality.