CORE READINGS

Urban poverty: spatial/physical dimensions

UN-Habitat (2015) A Practical Guide to Designing, Planning, and Executing Citywide Slum Upgrading Programmes. UN-Habitat. Available at: https://unhabitat. org/a-practical-guide-to-designing-planning-andexecuting-citywide-slum-upgrading-programmes

As an introduction, read the first chapter of this report by UN-Habitat, it provides a concise summary of the causes and issues related to informal settlements.

McGranahan, G., Schensul, D. and Singh, G. (2016) ‘Inclusive urbanization: Can the 2030 Agenda be delivered without it?’, Environment and Urbanization, 28(1), pp. 13–34. Available at: https://journals.sagepub. com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956247815627522

Watson, V. (2009) ‘Seeing from the South: Refocusing Urban Planning on the Globe’s Central Urban Issues’, Urban Studies, 46, pp. 2259–2275. Available at: https://www. researchgate.net/publication/248974362_ Seeing_from_the_South_Refocusing_Urban_ Planning_on_the_Globe’s_Central_Urban_Issues

Design and planning in development

Patel, S., Burra, S. and D’Cruz, C. (2001) ‘Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) – foundations to treetops’, Environment & Urbanization, 13(2), pp. 45–60. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu-projects/21st_Century/ resources/papers/documents/patel.pdf

This paper describes the formation and development of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI), an international people’s organisation which represents member federations of urban poor and homeless groups from 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It describes the evolution of these national federations and how they grew to challenge conventional development thinking and to develop new, community-directed precedents for poverty reduction. The paper also describes SDI’s experiences with international agencies, including its involvement in the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure, and the measures taken to ensure that its work with and experience of the ‘global’ benefits and strengthens the ‘local’, adding value to the plans of the urban poor.

Kapp, S., Baltazar, A. P. and Morado, D. (2010) ‘Architecture as Critical Exercise: Little Pointers Towards Alternative Practices’, Field Journal, 2(1), pp. 7–30. Available at: http://www.field-journal.org/uploads/ file/2008%20Volume%202%20/Architecture%20 as%20Critical%20Exercise_MOM.pdf

This paper aims to reframe the operative field of architecture by interpreting it as an event and an open process. This shift in attention, from finished objects towards the whole process of design, building and use, wrests the production of urban space from the clutches of specialists, most notably architects and planners, and places it in a much broader social context. Based on this assumption, the authors ask: what would then be left for architects and built environment professionals to do? The paper argues that professionals should take on three fundamental tasks: a constant and incisive theoretical and practical critique; the production of interfaces or instruments for helping all actors involved to realise their own critical actions on space; and thirdly, any mediation required between the actors themselves and those interfaces or instruments. The paper argues that these proposed practices represent attempts to overcome the production of space as “reproduction of the social relations of production”.