In this book, Michel S.Laguerre argues that there exists an informal city located just beneath and in the interstices of the formal city. The metaphor is not geographical, but rather structural and hermeneutical. This is the city where manoeuvres that cannot be done publicly, legally, ethically or otherwise are performed. The author shows with illustrative data drawn from the American urban experience - the San Francisco-Oakland Metropolitan area - why and how the informal city must be seen as the hidden dimension of the formal city.
Latin American cities have always been characterized by a strong tension between what is vaguely described as their formal and informal dimensions. However, the terms formal and informal refer not only to the physical aspect of cities but also to their entire socio-political fabric. Informal cities and settlements exceed the structures of order, control and homogeneity that one expects to find in a formal city; therefore the contributors to this volume - from such disciplines as architecture, urban planning, anthropology, urban design, cultural and urban studies and sociology - focus on alternative methods of analysis in order to study the phenomenon of urban informality. This book provides a thorough review of the work that is currently being carried out by scholars, practitioners and governmental institutions, in and outside Latin America, on the question of informal cities.
"Every day in American cities street vendors spread out their wares on sidewalks, food trucks serve lunch from the curb, and homeowners hold sales in their front yards—examples of the wide range of informal activities that take place largely beyond the reach of government regulation. This book examines the “informal revolution” in American urban life, exploring a proliferating phenomenon often associated with developing countries rather than industrialized ones and often dismissed by planners and policy makers as marginal or even criminal. The case studies and analysis in The Informal City challenge this narrow conception of informal urbanism. The chapters look at informal urbanism across the country, empirically and theoretically, in cities that include Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Kansas City, Atlantic City, and New York City. They cover activities that range from unpermitted in-law apartments and ad hoc support for homeless citizens to urban agriculture, street vending and day labor. The contributors consider the nature and underlying logic of these activities, argue for a spatial understanding of informality and its varied settings, and discuss regulatory, planning, and community responses"--Publisher's website.
This is the first book to address future informal settlements at the global scale. It argues that to foster favourable conditions for the sustainable evolution of future informal cities, planners must consider the same issues that are paramount in formal urban developments, such as provision of: balanced land uses energy efficiency and mobility water management and food sufficiency governance and community participation productivity and competitiveness identity and sense of place Planning and Design for Future Informal Settlements makes a call for responsible action to address the urban challenges of the developing world, suggesting that the vitality of informality, coupled with spatial design and good management, can support the efficient use of resources in better places to live. The book analyses the strengths and weaknesses of informal urbanism and the challenges faced by the fast growing cities of the developing world. Through case studies, it demonstrates the contributions and limitations of different attempts to plan ahead for urban growth, from the creation of formal housing and urban infrastructures for self-built dwellings to the improvement of existing informal settlements. It provides a robust framework for planners and designers, policy-makers, NGOs and local governments working to improve living conditions in developing cities.
This collection of essays challenges long-entrenched ideas about the history, nature, and significance of the informal neighborhoods that house the vast majority of Latin America's urban poor. Until recently, scholars have mainly viewed these settlements through the prisms of crime and drug-related violence, modernization and development theories, populist or revolutionary politics, or debates about the cultures of poverty. Yet shantytowns have proven both more durable and more multifaceted than any of these perspectives foresaw. Far from being accidental offshoots of more dynamic economic and political developments, they are now a permanent and integral part of Latin America's urban societies, critical to struggles over democratization, economic transformation, identity politics, and the drug and arms trades. Integrating historical, cultural, and social scientific methodologies, this collection brings together recent research from across Latin America, from the informal neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, Managua and Buenos Aires. Amid alarmist exposés, Cities from Scratch intervenes by considering Latin American shantytowns at a new level of interdisciplinary complexity. Contributors. Javier Auyero, Mariana Cavalcanti, Ratão Diniz, Emilio Duhau, Sujatha Fernandes, Brodwyn Fischer, Bryan McCann, Edward Murphy, Dennis Rodgers
Latin American cities have always been characterized by a strong tension between what is vaguely described as their formal and informal dimensions. However, despite intrinsic semantic implications, the terms formal and informal do not refer only to the physical aspect of cities but also to their entire socio-political fabric. Given the fact that informal cities and settlements exceed the structures of order, control and homogeneity expected to be found in the formal city, the wide-ranging essays in this volume from disciplinary areas such as anthropology, architecture, history, cultural and urban studies, and sociology are concerned with the need to produce alternative methods of analysis in order to study the phenomenon of urban informality. This book provides a thoroughgoing review of the work that is currently being carried out by scholars, practitioners and governmental institutions, in and outside Latin America, on the question of informal cities.
This book brings together two bodies of research on urban Africa that have tended to be separate, studies of urban land use and housing and studies of work and livelihoods. Africa's future will be increasingly urban, and the inherited legal, institutional and financial arrangements for managing urban development are inadequate. Access to employment, shelter and services is precarious for most urban residents. The result is the phenomenal growth of the informal city. Extra-legal housing and unregistered economic activities proliferate and basic urban services are increasingly provided informally. Recent decades of neo-liberal political and economic reforms have increased social inequality across urban space. After an introductory chapter by the editors, the contributions are grouped into the following sections: - LOCALITY, PLACE, AND SPACE - ECONOMY, WORK, AND LIVELIHOODS - LAND, HOUSING, AND PLANNING The case studies are drawn from a diverse set of cities on the African continent. A central theme is how practices that from an official standpoint are illegal or extra-legal do not only work but are considered legitimate by the actors concerned. Another is how the informal city is not exclusively the domain of the poor, but also provides shelter and livelihoods for better-off segments of the urban population.
Computational design has become widely accepted into mainstream architecture, but this is the first book to advocate applying it to create adaptable masterplans for rapid urban growth, urban heterogeneity, through computational urbanism. Practitioners and researchers here discuss ideas from the fields of architecture, urbanism, the natural sciences, computer science, economics, and mathematics to find solutions for managing urban change in Asia and developing countries throughout the world. Divided into four parts (historical and theoretical background, our current situation, methodologies, and prototypical practices), the book includes a series of essays, interviews, built case studies, and original research to accompany chapters written by editor Tom Verebes to give you the most comprehensive overview of this approach. Essays by Marina Lathouri, Jorge Fiori, Jonathan Solomon, Patrik Schumacher, Peter Trummer, and David Jason Gerber. Interviews with Dana Cuff, Xu Wei Guo, Matthew Prior, Tom Barker, Su Yunsheng, and Brett Steele. Built case studies by Zaha Hadid Architects, James Corner Field Operations, XWG Studio, MAD, OCEAN Consultancy Network, Plasma Studio, Groundlab, Peter Trummer, Serie Architects, dotA, and Rocker-Lange Architects.
Evolving out of a research project on information technology and society, the book explores the digitization of the American city. Laguerre examines the impact of changes to various sectors of society, brought about by the advent of information technology and the Internet upon daily life in the contemporary American metropolis. The book focuses on actual information technology practices in the Silicon Valley/San Francisco metropolitan area, explaining how those practices are remoulding social relations, global interaction and the workplace environment.
Cities are not made only of stone: they harbor ways of life, practices, movements, moods, atmospheres, feelings. Yet the ineffable nature of affects has long deprived human passions of a meaningful role when it comes to observing urban space and envisioning its future transformation. With this book, we explore the contemporary city and its transitional conditions from a different perspective: a quest to understand how the space of collective life and the feelings this engenders are connected, how they mutually give form to each other. In an interdisciplinary collection of essays, The Affective City means to open a discussion on the “soft” presences animating the world of urban objects: beyond the city built out of mere things, this book’s focus is on the forces that make urban life emerge, thrive, flourish, but also wither, and sometimes die. A task crucial for the survival of cities as human habitats, in an urban world that – with every passing day – seems to draw closer a crisis.
