Informal City

URBANISM & THE INFORMAL CITY!!!

Urbanism & The Informal City research cluster was launched in October 2009 by Jorge Fiori, Elena Pascolo and Alex Warnock-Smith. The aim of the cluster is to explore the concept of the ‘informal’ as a parallel modality that shapes the urban condition. Previously associated with cities in developing or emerging economies, it is now a pervasive phenomenon spanning a spectrum of economies and cities. Is this a threat to formal processes of city formation and the institutions which govern them, or does it define an alternative response to producing and planning cities? Can these contrasting ways of producing and appropriating cities, with their different logics and rules, co-exist? With particular emphasis on spatiality, the cluster is looking for ways in which ‘informal’ processes contribute to a radical re-thinking of the space of the city and its institutions.

The AA played a leading role in shaping the international debate on self-produced informal cities, particularly through the seminal work of Otto Koenigsberger, John Turner, Hans Harms and several of their other colleagues and students. Building upon this legacy, the cluster has been researching different approaches and responses to the informal within the architectural, urban and academic professions. It is our contention that, over the last half a century, strategies that deal with the informal have become almost exclusively focused on socio-economic and political-institutional dimensions, with the effect of de-spatialising the debate. Starting with the question: ‘what is the spatiality of the informal and of its articulation with the “formal” city?’ the cluster has been investigating the work of contemporary designers, thinkers and practitioners who address the space of the informal in different ways and at different scales.

The cluster is preparing a number of international events to be held at the AA in 2010, including a series of  lectures by guest speakers and a symposium. Please see our events list for updates. We are constantly looking for new and interesting work that contributes to the debate – please get in touch if you would like to be involved.