The Potential for Informal Cities
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Does design have a role to play in the future of housing?
In Australia – like many other countries – housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable. There is a lot of housing pressure and a relatively high cost of living. In Victoria, affordable housing is defined as spending no more than one-third of a household’s weekly income on rent or mortgage repayments.
However in recent times, trends have shown that the cost of housing is far outgrowing wage growth. A report released by the Grattan Institute outlined that house prices have more than doubled over the past 20 years with the strain most acute in Sydney and Melbourne. This strain however, is becoming most evident in cities across the developing world.
According to the University of Oxford, nearly 70% of the world’s population will be urban by 2050. As formal cities continue to expand in the developing world, so do informal settlements and their unique economies.
From the favelas in Rio to the townships scattered across South Africa, Seth Okyere (MSc in Urban Planning and Policy Design) believes that “informal settlements are projected to grow despite decades of improvement programs. It is in light of this and the growing consensus to practically rethink this phenomenon that an urgent question emerges: What do we do with informal settlements?”
The inexorable links between formal and informal cities are undeniable and in some circumstances, unavoidable.
Citing the informal settlements in Caracas (Venezuela), Bogota and Medellin (Colombia), architect David Gouveneur believes that a redefinition of what informal settlements represent is necessary. Especially in pursuit of a more equitable future.
“In these settlements, basic services are non-existent or very poor, such as potable water, wastewater treatment, and waste disposal; public spaces and amenities are rarely found and economically these areas are highly dependent on the formal city.
“Targeted interventions can become equally successful components of complex and broader systems, improving living conditions for hundreds of millions in these new cities in the making.”
However, these targeted interventions must be built on the principles of participatory design. In an interview with Local Peoples founder Giuseppe Demaio, Marjetica Potrč outlines the four key steps fundamental to participatory design:
– Listening to and talking with the local residents before making any definite plan,
– Involving the community in the decision-making and design processes,
– Involving the community in the construction process,
– Transferring responsibility for the developed project to the community
Participatory design seeks to bring all stakeholders into the heart of the design process. This is a way for designers to better understand, meet and oftentimes pre-empt the community’s needs. Applied at a city scale, participatory design allows us to shift the lens to view informal cities as self-organized cities.
The team at Oxford echo this sentiment outlining that informal settlements operate outside the common legal and regulatory framework and yet are intricately woven into the functioning of the city.
Instead of a citizenry constantly struggling against an elite minority, communities within self-organized cities are empowered to rally together to create lasting social change.
Together with a political schoolroom for natural leaders to emerge, David Gouveneur believes a sense of inclusivity and self-determination can develop.
“Such interventions if rightly envisioned, contextually designed, skillfully managed and unreservedly supported can create efficient, sustainable and inclusive cities that benefit the poor urban majority.”
Overall, David Gouveneur along with many others, believe that the dynamic potential for informal – or self organized – cities is clear.
“Informal settlements cannot be considered a marginal urban condition, but rather the mainstream of the dynamic forms of complex urban ecologies that are shaping highly populated cities of the developing world.
“The goal is to tap into this logic, to tap its inner forces and to foster a better performance of the system.”
Failure to do so, would be a disservice to the human condition.
