SESSION 26

UNRAVELLING THE FALLACY OF INFORMAL URBANISM: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THEORIES AND METHODS

The fallacy of conventional urban planning praxis to create dichotomies in the exploration and treatment of urban settlements is pervasive. Viewed as subaltern, urbanism in the global South has been labelled “informal” owing to its evolutionary nature of iteratively adapting and reconfiguring to the demands of neoliberal processes, which continue to commodify urban spaces and, by extension, places. These settlements are counter-hegemonic expressions against increasingly anti-urban poor urban governance. From an academic perspective, they provide a critical lens through which the everyday challenges of stagnant economic growth are observed. However, and critically, they are the realities of an ever-expanding urban population, which is unlikely to dissipate, at least not in the short term. They are neither good nor bad but represent the future of urbanity in the global South but have been seen as radical in the global North. Seen through titles such as “Planet of Slums” (Davis, 2006), the place of settlements typified by “informality” are otherised and bastardised. There has been little offered by way of assimilating these settlements in contemporary urban planning discourses and urban governance systems. In this light, this proposed session aims at illuminating the limitations of the existing theories and methods (including classification, formalisation, in-situ upgrading, etc.) when considering these settlements.