Aseem Inam: What is the relationship between informality and sustainability as seen through the lens of design?
Through such a powerful lens, we acknowledge that while cities face enormous challenges and crises, they also constitute places and networks of innovation and transformation. A significant source of innovation are informal urbanisms. I define informal urbanisms as the transactional conditions of ambiguity that exist between that which is acceptable and that which is unacceptable in cities. Thus, informal urbanisms constitute the transactive realm between coded formalities (e.g. planning regulations, engineered infrastructures), and fluid informalities (e.g. social networks around housing issues, political negotiations over use of public spaces). In fact, informal urbanisms are not marginalized forms of places and practices; rather, they are central to understanding the logics of urbanism.
Focusing on various types of urban infrastructure and examples of illuminating case studies, a forthcoming book chapter by me proposes an analytical framework to develop a systematic and in-depth understanding of these informal urbanisms, in order to develop their potential for transforming cities through "off-grid" strategies. The purpose of the framework is to harness the everyday knowledge and informal urbanisms of marginalized residents in order to flip the narrative from their marginalization to their empowerment in the face of urban crises. In this manner, our understanding of the design of the everyday city and its long-term sustainability will be broadened, deepened and ultimately, empowered.
In this manner, this chapter fundamentally rethinks what constitutes urban infrastructure and its future design by proposing a theoretical framework and attendant research agenda. The chapter investigates how residents transact i.e. have interactive exchanges, with urban infrastructure (e.g. water, sanitation, transportation, communication, energy), in the global south via “off-grid” approaches (i.e. highly creative ways, such as informal strategies and social innovations). The theoretical framework is based on two innovative premises. The first is that the conjunctions of people and their transactions with each other and with urban infrastructure in the global south in fact constitute a type of unique infrastructure itself i.e. people as infrastructure, following Simone (2004).
The second is that these types of people/people and people/infrastructure transactions can be further designed to empower residents and create transformative urban practices i.e. designing urban transformation, following Inam (2014). Integrating these two premises, the chapter further develops this theoretical framework via a research agenda focusing on the global south, where the most ground-breaking innovations in informality have been integral to cities for centuries e.g. in Africa, Asia, Latin America.
By pursuing this research agenda, the chapter proposes new ideas about the power of design, such as the everyday creativity of citizens, and the transdisciplinary collaborations necessary to redesign urban infrastructure. This is also an approach for learning and theorizing from the global south that is highly relevant to the global north (e.g. in terms of radically democratic design, innovation in the face of resource constraints, horizontal networks rather than top-down expertise). AI.
Note: The name of the forthcoming book is Informality Now, edited by Antonino Di Raimo, Steffen Lehmann, and Alessandro Melis, and to be published by Routledge in 2020-2021.
The Ocupação São João in São Paulo addresses the critical shortage of housing via a residential squatting strategy that also contributes to the cultural infrastructure of the city through a self-managed cultural center, the Centro Cultural São João. The mural in the cultural center symbolizes how citizens can empower the transactions of such infrastructure through radically democratic strategies and informal urbanisms. Source: Aseem Inam.