Forms of Informal Settlement: Upgrading, Morphology and Morphogenesis

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on the challenge of informal settlements. Drawing on multiple case studies across the cities of the global South, this Special Issue aims to explore the ways in which the built environment professions can most effectively engage with processes of upgrading as well as the transformation of negative place identities. Cities have become centres of jobs and opportunities, attracting flows of rural-to-urban migrants, for many of whom informality works as a resource to move beyond the regulatory order in terms of development, design, construction, and urban codes. While informal settlements accommodate about one billion people and counting, these settlements have remained largely undocumented and invisible on official maps. Nonetheless, they are here to stay as the challenge of informal settlements cannot be simply addressed through practices of forced eviction and demolition. With a few exceptions, most informal settlements can be upgraded incrementally and on the same site. The intention, therefore, is to better understand the ways in which forms of informal settlements work in order to provide an effective knowledge base for slum upgrading practices.

The key questions are as follows: What are the morphologies of informal settlements? What are the increments of change? How do processes of morphogenesis work in informal settlements? How can the built environment professions most effectively engage with incremental and in-situ processes of upgrading? In what ways can urban mapping be used to unravel how informal settlements work in terms of urban morphologies and adaptive processes? How can the relations between informal and formal be mapped across different scales? How does functional mix emerge through processes of self-organisation in informal settlements? What are the lessons for generative processes of self-organisation in urban design and planning? What are the ‘informal’ urban codes? What are the dynamics of population, building, and open space densities in informal settlements? How do access networks emerge and consolidate over time? What are the relations between density, mix, access, and public/private urban interfaces? How does public space work in informal settlements? What are the relations between private and public territories? How does the spatial visibility of informal settlements work in relation to the dynamics of place identity? In what ways can the productive capacities of informality be harnessed in slum upgrading practices? How can the emergence of ‘slum conditions’ be prevented in informal settlements? How can the functionality and openness of the public realm be protected in upgrading processes? What are the capacities and limitations of design interventions? What are the synergies and contradictions between formal and informal processes of upgrading?

Dr. Hesam Kamalipour
Guest Editor

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