Description
Book SynopsisWhile often seen as unplanned or spontaneous, informal settlement is better understood as a mode of production: a co-evolution of architecture, urban design and planning that embodies informal rules and shapes urban development.
The Atlas of Informal Settlement is a comparative study of the spatial logic of informal settlement based on mapping and analysing the evolution of urban form (morphogenesis) in 51 contemporary settlements across the planet the first of its kind and a fundamental change in thinking for urban studies and built environment professionals.
Each of the 51 case studies uses maps and aerial photographs to examine key stages of development, showing how informal settlement adapts to different contexts of political economy, topography, culture, climate and land tenure; revealing a complex range of actors from settlers and states to land mafias and pirate developers. It demonstrates the range of design processes and formal outcomes; how the info
Trade Review
The Atlas demonstrates the indispensable value that is generated by investigating the spatial logic of informal settlement, as this exposes factors often overlooked in broad-brush statistics and geospatial analysis based on artificial intelligence. Focusing on fifty-one sites, the Atlas offers a nuanced spatial analysis at different scale levels and reveals the processes and outcomes of self-organized urban design. In doing so, it offers learnings for context-sensitive policies for affordable housing and neighbourhood infrastructure in rapidly growing cities. * Raf Tuts, Director, Global Solutions Division, UN-Habitat *
We know very little about most of the informal settlements that house over a billion urban dwellers. This book advances and deepens our understanding of these settlements‘ development and expansion over time in all their diversity and complexity. * David Satterthwaite, International Institute for Environment and Development *
This is a vital empirical consolidation of the heterogeneous ways urban settlements are being composed and governed. The "informal" is always extending itself across new terrain and vernaculars; something always being worked and worked on in incessant processes of becoming unsettled and resettled. * AbdouMaliq Simone, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield *
Table of Contents
List of figures List of authors Acknowledgements Part A INTRODUCTION: Informal Settlement as a Verb Part B METHOD: Mapping Informal Assemblages Part C SETTLEMENT Part D MORPHOGENESIS: The Spatial Logic of Self-Organized Urban Design Part E REFERENCES Glossary Index
