Teaching Informal Urbanism: Simulating Informal Settlement Practices in the Design Studio

Abstract

Informal settlements have become dominant forms and processes of urban development in many cities, yet the task of helping students engage with design issues in such contexts is fraught with difficulties of access, safety and complexity. Drawing on detailed fieldwork, this paper explores ways in which informal settlement formation can be taught in design studio through the use of games that simulate incremental practices of room-by-room accretion and prospects for transformation. The pedagogical goals are to effect a blurring of authorship and authority, to undermine top-down thinking and to nourish forms of design imagination that unite process and form. Informal settlements are largely defined as operating outside the formal control of the state. Although it is impossible to separate them from issues of poverty and lack of tenure, it is important to define informality separately from slums and squatting. While a squatter settlement implies a blanket lack of tenure, most informal settlements involve a range of rental, squatting and informal entitlements. The UN defines a slum household as a dwelling with more than three people per room or without access to clean water, sanitation, security, and durable shelter; yet many dwellings in informal settlements have most or all of these. 5 Many such settlements have developed over time into well-serviced neighborhoods-no longer 'slums' and with varying levels of tenure and formality. Further, while informal settlements are unauthorized and unregulated, it is misleading to see them as unplannedstrategies, processes and construction are different from formal urbanism, but are nonetheless complex and at times sophisticated. Most of the literature on informal settlements says little about built form, which is treated as a somewhat neutral background to issues of process, economics, tenure, employment, infrastructure and politics. Yet the micro-spatial forms and processes of informal urbanism offer rich ground for architectural investigation and urban design thinking. Without wholesale demolition, the transformation from 'slums' to decent housing is complex and problematic. Most current research suggests transformations must be developed that do not simply replace the informal with a formalized system. The adaptive spatial practices of informal settlements are fundamental to their success in housing the urban poor, and this existing housing,

Towards an Informal Turn in the Built Environment Education: Informality and Urban Design Pedagogy

“…This is by no means a prescriptive solution, but rather an illustration of a specific way to Different forms of urban informality have largely remained not only invisible on official maps and from the gaze of the formal city [48] but also underexplored in urban design education. There is only an emerging body of knowledge on incorporating informality in the built environment education [45,46,[49][50][51][52]. It has been pointed out that developing courses on urban informality can most effectively expose students and instructors to the ways in which different forms of informality work in cities and make them visible [46] (p. 449).…”

“…The second Urban Design Studio can explore how urban design can engage with practices of upgrading by drawing on evidence from an international Field Study Visit. While the issues of access and safety become critical in coordinating such Design Studios, practices of incremental housing, informal accretion and possible transformations can be simulated using games as well [51]. Both Design Studios can explore the understudied aspects of informality, including regulatory responses and spatial solutions to most effectively accommodate informality [41].…”

The Case for Inclusion of International Planning Studios in Contemporary Urban Planning Pedagogy

“…More importantly, there is little research on the value and benefits of undertaking international planning studios or teaching approaches using similar terminology, such as studio abroad, global studios, travelling studios, and the like, in the Australian planning education landscape. In 2013, Owen, Dovey, and Raharjo observed that the major impediments to teaching students planning and design in offshore international studios are the difficulties of safety, settlement access, and the necessary skills required to understand city complexity [9]. experiences to their home settings where they live, thus drawing important comparative lessons on how cities are planned and the challenges of sustainable development in different contexts.…”

“…Students typically work in small collaborative groups with multiple learning and teaching approaches [3]. However, there is minimal attention in the literature concerning international planning studios that expose students to understanding wider regional and global city contexts, as well as address pressing social and civic planning and sustainable development issues [9].…”

Informal Land Rights and Infrastructure Retrofit: A Typology of Land Rights in Informal Settlements

“…Informal housing, which is often part of overcrowded, poorly serviced, and unhealthy neighbourhoods, has proven to be the only affordable housing choice left for a significant part of the population in Global South [1]. In the absence of regulated and planned provision of upfront necessary infrastructure-i.e., water supply, sanitation systems, footpaths, and drainage-these services have to be retrofitted after housing has been built, into unplanned and dense conditions [2].…”