DIS respecting ORDER - Advocating for greater informality in the built environment by luke cameron

DI S

respecting

E R D O R

Advocating for greater informality in the built environment.

Luke Cameron Critical Practice Theory London School of Architecture 3276 words 1

Acknowledging Informality Squatter settlements, favelas, shacks, villas miseria, barriadas, slums, or as they are collectively referred to as informal settlements are now the predominant mode of urbanisation, globally. As Mike Davis coined, we are becoming a ‘planet of slums'1. currently more than one billion live in informal settlements2, in some developing cities (Lima, Lagos) informal settlers make up over 70% of their inhabitants.3 4 By 2050, it is predicted that almost half the urban world will live in informal settlements.5

The dismissal of informal urbanism can be linked to the language used to describe it. Informal settlements are referred to as ‘unplanned’, therefore implied to be out of the discipline of planning and urban design, as it is only concerned with environments that are ‘planned’. Informal settlements in many articles are portrayed as ‘organically grown’, little agency of design is attributed to the people who shape these built environments.9 Dismissal of the self-built, as ‘nondesign’, furthers the cause for informal settlements not being studied to illuminating their design processes.10 We need to get past this formal/ informal binary, the root of which can be traced to western colonialism. Modern urban planning has always been bound to the mission of ‘modernising' and ‘civilising' large colonial territories, although rarely discussed, it persists in the mindsets of current urban planners.11 This unequal power relationship has been maintained and allows for the dismissal and othering of buildings designed by ‘non-professionals’.12

Informality, or that which exists outside of formal legal-juridical frameworks, has long been the study of economist sociologists and anthropologists6. Despite its clear dominance in urban growth it only features marginally in the discourse of urban studies and planning.7 The study of urban informality, that which emerges from scarcity and need, is highly adaptive, depends on reuse and economy of resource, seems invaluable in times of such uncertainty.8 In the face of the climate crisis, disruptive innovation, automation, pandemics, geopolitical uncertainty and the global surge in urban population, could informal settlements provide lessons on urban resilience?

The colonial fantasies of order and omnipotence are also still prevalent in current planning, entwined with the modernist belief that the fixed

1 Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso (London), 2006. 2 UN-HABITAT. "Slum Almanac 2015/2016." Nairobi, 2016. 3 Peter Kellett, Lea K Allen and Felipe Hernandez, Rethinking The Informal City (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012). p. 12 4 Amnesty International, "Nigeria: The Human Cost Of A Megacity", Amnesty.Org.Uk, 2020 <https://www.amnesty.org.uk/lagos-nigeria-human-cost-megacity> [Accessed April 2020]. 5 Forbes Magazine, “Two Billion Slum Dwellers”, forbesmagazine.com <https://https://www.forbes.com/2007/06/11/third-world-slumsbiz-cx_21cities_ee_0611slums.html#656f492a61a8> [Accessed April 2020]. 6 Camillo Boano, "Architecture Must Be Defended: Informality And The Agency Of Space", Opendemocracy, 2013 <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opensecurity/architecture-must-be-defended-informality-and-agency-of-space/> [Accessed 22 April 2020} 7 Two notable texts in the field that claim to offer a comprehensive coverage of the discipline, The Oxford Handbook of urban planning (Randall 2015) & The Sage Handbook of New Urban Studies (Hannigan 2017) both only devote a single chapter out of 39 and 34 respectively to urban informality. 8 Tim Smedley, "Sustainable Urban Design: Lessons To Be Taken From Slums", The Guardian, 2013 <https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-design-lessons-from-slums> [Accessed 22 April 2020]. 9 Tanzil Shafique, Learning From " Non-Design " : Claiming Urban Informality As New Design Research Territory (University of Sydney, 2018). p.5 10 Ibid. 11 Marion von Osten, "Architecture Without Architects—Another Anarchist Approach", E-Flux, 6 (2009) <https://www.e-flux.com/journal/06/61401/architecture-without-architects-another-anarchist-approach/> [Accessed 22 April 2020] 12 Vanessa Watson, "African Urban Fantasies - New Post Colonial Frontiers", 2013.

shape of new ‘modern’ cities would yield social reform (order).13 14 Reflective of a larger western metaphysics of viewing things as largely static and determinate (being) as opposed to seeing them in a process of becoming.15 Research in the field of design fixates on elements images and form, not on processes. As shapers of the built environment, we are confronted with a lack of knowledge about the processes that give rise and maintain these informal settlements, previously seen as the “other” but are now are the majority.16 Finally, informality is often overlooked through fear of glorifying or romanticising the abhorrent conditions many struggle through in slums. To inform contemporary urbanism we must treat slums as a spatial fact as well as an aberrant reality.17 Using the term ‘informal settlements’ as purely a euphemism for slums conflates informality with poverty. To understand the benefits that can be brought from informality we must make a distinction between it and slums. “A slum is a symptom of poverty; informality is a transgressive practice through which residents manage the conditions of poverty”.18

Figure 1: Postcard from the future. GMJ re-imagines London taken over by informal settlements due to rapid migration brought upon by the climate crisis. Source: GMJ, aerial photograph by Jason Hawkes <http:// www.postcardsfromthefuture.com>

Despite their claims to offer more possibilities for liberal forms of living, urban infrastructures that are built or claimed by citizens themselves are almost nonexistent in Western societies.19 The Western fixation on order means we have to turn to the Global South to understand what benefits informality could bring. By taking slums as the extreme manifestation of urban informality, we can use it as a vehicle to discuss what increased informality within the built environment could offer western cities.

13 Osten, "Architecture Without Architects”. 14 Rem Koolhaas 'What Ever Happened to Urbanism?' in S,M,L,XL, eds. Rem Koolhaas and others (New York: Monacelli Press, 1997), pp. 959/971. 15 Tanzil Shafique, Learning From " Non-Design " : Claiming Urban Informality As New Design Research Territory (University of Sydney, 2018). p.7 16 Shafique, p. 3 17 Yves Pedrazzini, Jérôme Chenal, and Jean-Claude BolayJean-Claude 'Slums: Note for an Urban Theory’ in Learning From The Slums For The Development Of Emerging Cities eds. Bolay, Jérôme Chenal and Yves Pedrazzini, (Springer International, 2016) p.20 18 Kim Dovey, "Informalising Architecture: The Challenge Of Informal Settlements", Architectural Design, 83.6 (2013), p. 85 19 von Osten, "Architecture Without Architects”.

Freedom to Adapt High levels of informality allow for increased adaptability, a much needed attribute to make life sustainable under the conditions of poverty.20 Slums work in approximation, able to quickly adjust to different pressures.21 Homes are often more than a place to live they are platforms for economic growth. Entrepreneurial ideas can be tested without the risk and cost of renting a commercial space. If the business fails it can be replaced by a more successful one, but more importantly, if the business succeeds it can expand to the floor above or incorporate the failing establishment next door. This increased revenue will then often go on the expansion of the house to a second storey, or even a third, which via independent access could be an apartment for a cousin, renter, or the space to start a family.22 This tool equally works the opposite way where if a family falls on hard times the shop could be subdivided and rented, similarly it can happen if a family member moves out. The formalisation of these settlements often fails as it removes this tool of adaptability, when moved to standardised apartments their space is fixed, there is no room to expand.23

processes of subdivision, with some splitting up to seven times (figure 2) .24 As noted in the slums, this has allowed the proprietor to respond quickly to the nuances of the market, this economic resilience had an increasing impetus over the period of the financial crisis.25 She was not only able to uncover the individual benefits to proprietors, but also the wider societal benefits of informality. In a comparison with Westfield in Stratford, Peckham town centre which has a comparable floor area to the glitzy four-storey shopping centre, had more retail outlets per square metre, employs over 50% more people and is more profitable and thus pays more rates to the local council.26 Small phone kiosks on Rye Lane have the same rental value per square metre as shops in Knightsbridge, which are amongst the highest retail rates in the world.27

We do not need to go to the global south to study this phenomenon, through migration the informal logic of bazaars and street markets of the global south have started to infiltrate the British Highstreet. Suzanne Hall, an urban sociologist at the London School of Economics, has documented the benefits of increased informality through the mapping of Rye Lane in Peckham, part of her ‘Ordinary Street’ project. She discovered one in four shops along Rye Lane have undergone

Figure 2: Mapping sub-divisions and sub-letting of shop interiors on Rye Lane. Source: Suzanne Hall, "Super-Diverse Street: A ‘Trans-Ethnography’ Across Migrant Localities", Ethnic And Racial Studies, 38.1 (2013), 22-37 p. 19

20 Kim Dovey, "Informalising Architecture: The Challenge Of Informal Settlements", Architectural Design, 83.6 (2013), p. 85 21 Tim Smedley, "Sustainable Urban Design: Lessons To Be Taken From Slums", The Guardian, 2013 <https://www.theguardian.com/ sustainable-business/sustainable-design-lessons-from-slums> [Accessed April 2020]. 22 Jeff Risom and Mayra Madriz, "Embracing The Paradox Of Planning For Informality", Nextcity, 2018 23 Dovey p.84 24 Suzanne Hall, "Future Of Places", 2014. 25 Ibid 26 Ibid 27 Ibid

Figure 3: Informal enterprise in Dharavi, Mumbai, India. Source: Manfred Sommer <https://www.flickr.com/photos/asienman/15234396979> [Accessed April 2020]

Figure 4: Informality exhibited in Peckham, London. Exterior of the shop on Rye Lane mapped in figure 2 Source: Google Street view. <https://www.google.co.uk/ maps/@51.4698698,-0.0683903,3a,75y,281.51h,84.97t/ data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sX2J8MRZuLXy0BTLg0xJDGg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656> [Accessed April 2020]

The emerging informality on Rye Lane, that could arguably be pivotal to the future of many high streets, remains invisible to the lens of power. Local planners want to remove all informality, by preventing subletting through asserting that ‘no further subdivisions’ should be written into future lease agreements.28 Redevelopment plans for the area revert to the established norms of ‘conservation’ and ‘big shop retail’, ignoring the benefits of a dense complex mix of uses in favour of visual pleasure.29 Architects and urban planners need to recognise and champion the benefits of economic resilience in allowing informality to flourish, rather than rejecting it based on visual disorder.

demolition and reconstruction when needs change.32 Modern housing in the UK built to rigid specifications and minimum space standards, are increasingly difficult to adapt to shifting requirements. The average life-span of new public housing in Britain is now forty years.33 In comparison, historic examples such as Georgian Row houses built over 200 years ago, are very simple in structure, allowing for a range of internal arrangements over their long lifespan.34 The UK’s construction industry accounts for 35-40% of the country’s total emissions.35 50,000 buildings are demolished every year.36 To help reduce emissions within the industry we need to reduce consumption of materials, through ensuring those structures built today are able to adapt to the needs of the future.

Expansion requires space to expand into. This can often be difficult to come across in a world where minimum space standards dictate the arrangement of buildings. By increasing the amount of space given to users, greater than what is ‘needed’, we give them the freedom to adapt. This concept of allowing users the freedom of expansion is shown in the work of Lacaton & Vassal. By using the same economic resource they aim to give users ‘more freedom, more possibilities’ through maximising the amount of space often more than doubling that required.30 Their architecture seeks to minimise imposition, arguing that they are ‘confident with the user and the inhabitant to use this capacity’.31

Examination of informal urbanism has shown how adaptable environments can create more, economically and environmentally resilient places. There is a requirement for the advancement of spatial typologies that empower significant levels of interior adjustment, subletting and spatial trading, allowing houses and enterprises to expand and contract with changing circumstances.37 Its not a relinquishment of the role of architects and urban designers, instead the system/structures that allow for the highest levels of individual freedom are prioritised, allowing people to be agents of their own environments, rather than passive beneficiaries or victims.38 This could be termed ‘loose infrastructure’, rather than being seen through the concept of the formal/informal binary.

Structures like those of Laccaton and Vassal, that are left incomplete, partially unprogrammed, are also more environmentally sustainable. Inflexible architecture leads to a wasteful cycle of total

28 Suzanne Hall, "Super-Diverse Street: A ‘Trans-Ethnography’ Across Migrant Localities", Ethnic And Racial Studies, 38.1 (2013), 22-37 p. 16 29 Ibid. 30 Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, "Freedom Of Use", 2015. 31 Ibid 32 Richard Sennett, "Quant - The Public Realm", richardsennett.com <http://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/general2. aspx?pageid=16&cc=gb> [Accessed April 2020]. 33 Ibid 34 Ibid 35 Emily Booth, "Join Our Retrofirst Campaign To Make Retrofit The Default Choice", Architects Journal, 2019 <https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/opinion/join-our-retrofirst-campaign-to-make-retrofit-the-default-choice/10044363.article> [Accessed April 2020]. 36 Ibid 37 Dovey p. 87 38 Julia King, "What Is The Incremental City?", Incremental Cities, 2013 <https://incrementalcity.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/what-isthe-incremental-city/> [Accessed 22 April 2020].

Figure 5: User inhabitation of Chalon-sur-Saône in Prés-SaintJean by Laccaton and Vassal Source: Phillppe Ruault. <https://www.lacatonvassal.com/index. php?idp=72> [Accessed April 2020]

Cultivating Connectivity Navigating down the narrow sinuous passageways of Dharavi, India’s largest informal settlement, you are greeted with a plethora of street life. The ground floors are active with both informal commerce and domestic activities spilling out into the public sphere.39 Traffic slows, having to circulate through the dense fabric and consistent activity, generating a social environment that is safer and quieter than other areas of the city that are engineered for the flow of automobiles.40 Children play in these streets from a young age, unattended, still within earshot of their parents and looked over by neighbours. You see older residents engage in conversation with passersby from their living room window or balcony, able to live independently and still engage in communal life.41 The irregular passages vary in width, making room for small plazas and gathering spaces, families pull their chairs in front of their houses to chat with neighbours, streets become places of casual exchange.42 In this dense fabric, there is a surprising sense of communal space.43 Compact walkable streets and mixeduse active ground floors foster strong social connections between residents.

longer function.”44 He went on to admit that it ‘Disgusted’ him.45 Typified in Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, for Paris drafted in 1925. Consisting of a series of repeated cruciform towers on a rigid grid, it was envisaged to replace a large swath of the historic centre of Paris. His plans would eliminate public life on the ground plain, by raising all activities into high freestanding towers46. Leaving the horizontal plain purely for circulation and traffic. This vision, though never realised, went onto shape public housing from Missouri to Mumbai; modernist estates consisting of tower blocks serviced by highways in vast oceans of unused open space. Families housed in these isolated containers in the sky found themselves cut off, literally and culturally, from the life that they had known on the ground. This loss of connection was equally felt in the suburban homestead, cut off by a complex network of streets, roads, and highways.47 Proliferation of zoning regulation in the name of clarity and order, removed the mixed-use nature of the city, separating different uses into isolated campuses, the shopping mall, the business parks, all reliant on the car to be accessed.48 Urbanism in the twentieth century reduced into merely autonomous buildings, objects in space, losing the cohesion cities used to have.49

The unregulated disorder of street life recited above was detested by early modern architects, it went vehemently against their efforts for visual order and control. When writing about 'the street' in his earlier career Le Corbusier, wrote it is “a relic of the centuries, a dislocated organ that can no

39 Kim Dovey, "Informalising Architecture: The Challenge Of Informal Settlements", Architectural Design, 83.6 (2013), p. 85 40 Jeff Risom and Mayra Madriz, "Embracing The Paradox Of Planning For Informality", Nextcity, 2018 41 Ibid 42 Ibid 43 Kevin McCloud, Kevin McCloud: Slumming It (Channel 4, 2010). 44 Le Corbusier ‘The Street’ in Et Son Atelier Rue De Sèvres 35 eds. Willy Boesiger (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006), pp. 118 - 119 45 Ibid 46 Richard Sennett, "Quant - The Public Realm", richardsennett.com <http://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/general2. aspx?pageid=16&cc=gb> [Accessed April 2020]. 47 Ibid 48 Ibid 49 Herman Hertzberger, Transformation + Accommodation, 2016 <https://www.hertzberger.nl/images/nieuws/TransformationAccomodation2016.pdf> [Accessed April 2020].

Figure 6: Plethora of street life, Dharavi, Mumbai, India. Source: Ashish Kelkar. <https://planningtank.com/city-insight/ mumbai-slum-rehabilitation-communicative-dimension-critical-spatial-theory> [Accessed April 2020]

Figure 7: Pruitt-Igoe, Missouri. Infamous Modernist estate that was demolished less than 20 year after construction. Source: <https://medium.com/@BlackRedGuard/reclaiming-blacksaint-louis-pruitt-igoe-the-people-and-the-pigs-20831285de80> [Accessed April 2020]

In the name of simplicity, perceived efficiencies and visual order, we lost connection and community developed through interaction on the ground. This disconnected urbanism can be attributed to many current issues. Over reliance on the automobile has been environmentally destructive. Social isolation from less compact neighbourhoods has been attributed to many mental and physical health issues. Segregation of uses and dilution of social space has diminished the probability of discussion and debate between those from differing backgrounds, on which democratic governance depends.50

enforcing another form onto a populace, will suffer from the same issues of over prescription detailed in the previous chapter. It is more important that we understand the process of how these settlements form. While seemingly disorganised from the outside, they exemplify the characteristics of flexibility and resilience that are vital to sustain a city socially. More empirical research needs to be conducted to greater understand the mechanisms that aid the dynamism and connectivity inherent in informal environments.54 The public realm has for too long been neglected by those concerned with the built environment. To create a more connected society we need to focus on the spaces in between buildings, the social fabric, the glue that binds a society. The public realm is the backbone of any city, a complex connected matrix of streets and public spaces. We cannot shy away from this complexity and retreat into simplicity and order, as modernists did. A retreat into order is a retreat away from those that are different to us. Where public space is inadequate, poorly designed or fractured, the city becomes increasingly segregated.55

However compelling it is to find negatives in overly deterministic planning, it must be recognised that most pioneering modernist proposals were an earnest response to the overcrowding and unsanitary environments of early industrial slums.51 These same attributes are ever-present in the developing world under conditions of poverty and without holistic oversight, incremental encroachment can starve the public realm of space, air and light.52 Therefore high quality public spaces, are not devoid of regulations but are places where new rules can be continually developed, places that allow for unforeseen uses, and places whose purposes are left intentionally open for interpretation.53 Rather than conjuring the thought of slums when considering informality in regards to public spaces, it may be better to think of medieval towns such as Siena. Both have grown incrementally over time rather than being centrally planned. The medieval town has since been formalised, but still carries the same characteristics. Physically we could replicate the shape of these informal cities, those of dense, compact, mixed-use, walkable neighbourhoods. However,

50 Sennett, "Quant - The Public Realm" 51 Chye Kiang Heng and Lai Choo Malone-Lee “Density and Urban Sustainability: An Exploration of Critical Issues” in Designing High-Density Cities eds. Edward Ng (London: Earthscan, 2009). p. 42 52 Dovey, p.88 53 Heng and Malone-Lee, p. 48 54 Heng and Malone-Lee, p. 49 55 United Nations, "Goal 11", United Nations - Department Of Economic And Social Affairs - Statistics Division <https://unstats.un.org/ sdgs/report/2019/goal-11/> [Accessed 22 April 2020].

Figure 9: Plan Voisin. Source: FLC/ADAGP <http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/corbuweb/morpheus.aspx?sysId=13&IrisObjectId=6159&sysLanguage=en-en&itemPos=2&itemCount=2&sysParentName=Home&sysParentId=65> [Accessed April 2020]

Figure 8: Dharavi, India Incremental encroachment under imperatives of poverty can starve the public realm of space, air and light Source: Plan International USA <https://www.flickr.com/photos/64408996@N07/5959760802> [Accessed April 2020]

Figure 10: A street in Siena, Italy. Source: <https://pxhere.com/en/photo/968626> [Accessed April 2020]

Collective Aesthetic An attentive walk down the streets of Villa 31, an informal settlement in the centre of Buenos Aires, reveals the pride that many people have in their home, as they choose colours and materials that reflect their taste and preferences. “On a quiet street, a family places a hand-painted tile with the house number and their name, the painted house reminds people passing by of the family who proudly lives there”.56

uncapped block-work bricks in balcony walls leave vessels for residents to grow their own plants. This idea of incomplete architecture is taken further by the work of architecture studio Elemental, in addressing the problem of social housing in Chile. Designing residents only half a house, providing the essential structure, a kitchen and bathroom, leaving the inhabitants to infill the rest.

For architecture to embrace informality, the profession will have to move past its fixation on form.57 One that often conflates visual disorder, with a lack of order. James C. Scott refers to this as high modernism, the belief that an efficient city is one that looks regimented and orderly in a geometric sense.58 This is displayed in the aesthetic of failed utopian visions of early modernist architects.

There is clearly a spectrum to this notion, it is an architect's goal to mediate between the finished & unfinished based on the situation. Giving users a well designed framework from which to start, acknowledging that the design is not a final product, static and determined, but is perceived as a process of becoming.60 Buildings should no longer strive to be finished objects, with fixed edges, sitting in empty space, only to be appreciated from afar like monuments.61 They should be porous spaces inviting adaptation, inhabitation and change, weaving into the urban fabric that already exists, a backdrop for urban life. Citizens will no longer be mere spectators but participants in the city.

A move away from monolithic aesthetic ideals, where personalised changes to the exterior are actively discouraged or forbidden as they are deemed to affect the architectural purity of the vision, towards an architecture that invites and allows for informal change by its inhabitants. This is not a removal of all architectural endeavours, it is one where architects are asked to instead focus on the complex integration of formal/informal and order/disorder.59

Increased informality not only creates social benefit, one in which occupants can take back pride, ownership and autonomy, it can also be seen as a drive towards a new aesthetic, a collective aesthetic. Think of the Favelas of Rio, both a mountainside full of houses and a house the size of a mountain. Inherently contextual, informal settlements are contingent upon resources that can be found locally.62 In a type of bricolage, rationality emerges from actor caught

These ideas can be seen in the work of Herman Hertzberger, in his use of raw materiality, and forming of spaces for personalisation, to provoke inhabitation and interaction. Raw concrete finishes are an invitation to be personalised and

56 Jeff Risom and Mayra Madriz, "Embracing The Paradox Of Planning For Informality", Nextcity, 2018 57 Kim Dovey, "Informalising Architecture: The Challenge Of Informal Settlements", Architectural Design, 83.6 (2013), p.87 58 James C. Scott, "Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes To Improve The Human Condition Have Failed", Foreign Affairs, 77.4 (1998), 121. 59 Dovey, p.88 60 Tim Smedley, "Sustainable Urban Design: Lessons To Be Taken From Slums”. 61 Richard Sennett, "Quant - The Public Realm", richardsennett.com <http://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/general2. aspx?pageid=16&cc=gb> [Accessed 22 April 2020]. 62 Raul P. Lejano and Corinna Del Bianco, "The Logic Of Informality: Pattern And Process In A São Paulo Favela", Geoforum, 91, p.202.

Figure 11: Haarlemmer Houttuinen Housing by Herman Hertzberger. Source: Ger van der Vlugt <https://miesarch.com/work/1507> [Accessed April 2020]

Figure 12: Iquique Housing, Chile by Elemental. Showing inhabitants additions. Source: Cristobal Palma <https://pxhere.com/en/photo/968626> [Accessed April 2020]

up in the act of fitting into place.63 Ordered variation is developed through incremental adaptations, creating a patchwork of individual characteristics. This level of depth is lost in large housing developments built on the economics of repetition, leading to stark impersonal design. In a world of increased informality, the value of architects will be perceived in the style of their thinking, rather than identified by the style of their buildings.64

Figure 13: Villa 31, Buenos Aires. Source: Victor R. Caivano/AP <https://www.ft.com/content/ de3eed42-0e3e-11e7-a88c-50ba212dce4d> [Accessed April 2020]

63 Ibid 64 Kim Dovey, "Informalising Architecture: The Challenge Of Informal Settlements", Architectural Design, 83.6 (2013), p.89

Figure 14: Collective aesthetic displayed in the Favelas of Rio, Source: Chensiyuan, Wikimedia Commons <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/1_rocinha_favela_closeup. JPG> [Accessed April 2020]

Figure 15: Stark impersonal modernist estate, Glasgow’s Red Road Flats. Source: John Lord <https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/opinion/ high-rise-low-quality-how-we-ended-up-with-deathtraps-likegrenfell/10021035.article> [Accessed April 2020]

Figure 16: Structure awaiting inhabitation. Iquique Housing At handover. Social Housing in Chile by Elemental Source: Taduez Jalocha <https://pxhere.com/en/photo/968626> [Accessed April 2020]

Freed from Omnipotence Through examining urban informality, it has highlighted issues in contemporary city design. Over deterministic planning that seeks order and control, leads to a fragile, disjointed city, that is not able to efficiently adapt to changing uncertainty. Although slums are clearly not a more humane model for urban development, their dense loose structures that are less prescriptive than the formal city, allow for greater flexibility and increased social exchange. Cities that are well connected and can adapt to change will be more resilient in the face of uncertainty. This is not to say that cities should not be planned, but that architects, planners and urban designers need to learn to embrace levels of informality in the built environment.

Architects and urbanists should not view this as a relinquishment of their role. Acknowledging that having total control is both impossible and also very problematic, should come as a freeing realisation. Design does not need to be so prescriptive, form not so tied to function, we can’t with any precision predict the outcomes, we can only try to create environments/structures that impart the least amount of resistance to change and allow for the most amount of interconnection. As Rem Koolhaas put it we can “redefine our relationship with the city not as its makers but as its mere subjects, as its supporters.”65

In order to develop the resilient cities of the future that we need, we will have to embrace informality. It is clear that the professions concerned with the built environment will need to let loose of their grip on visual order. Professionals are going to have to become more comfortable with “non-professionals”, citizens, having more input in the shaping of the built environment. There will have to be a mind shift that treats the visual disorder derived from complex adaptations to densely built environments as an indicator of quality rather than something to be eradicated or “ordered”. ‘Informality’ and ‘disorder’ can be seen as synonymous with ‘the empowerment of users’.

"redefine our relationship with the city not as its makers but as its mere subjects, as its supporters" - Rem Koolhaas

65 Rem Koolhaas 'What Ever Happened to Urbanism?' in S,M,L,XL, eds. Rem Koolhaas and others (New York: Monacelli Press, 1997), pp. 959/971.

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