ABSTRACT
Shelter is a fundamental human right; it is one of the essential factors of satisfactory living conditions and it is the principal built component of all cities. In most developing countries, the conventional methods for accommodating housing and urban demands of the poor are inadequate. In many cases, urban planning and design paradigms exclude the poor from appropriate sites, denying them the benefits of infrastructure, services, and amenities. Usually, these new urban dwellers cannot take advantage of the financial mechanisms of subsidized social housing programs; simultaneously, the production of public housing simply cannot cope with the demand. Although urban decision makers and stakeholders are biased against informal development, it has become necessary to consider how political, academic, professional, and institutional efforts have tried to address the challenges of informal urbanization. This reflection reveals that the twenty-first century lacks an effective model to encompass the magnitude and complexity of ongoing urbanization in developing countries. This chapter is structured in seven sections. The first section presents preconceptions that stakeholders have about informal settlements. It also highlights how important it is to ensure that those who have the vision, resources, managerial skills, and the will to act understand what is at stake. The second section explores what the role of city planning and urban design has been in the context of informal urbanization. It aims to better capture how Informal Armatures can transform city planning and urban design. The third section describes what could be considered
the limited impact of social housing programs. The fourth section analyzes the contributions and limitations of the programs referred to as “Sites and Services” as urban frameworks for self-constructed neighborhoods. A review of the different approaches, in Sections 1.5 and 1.6, indicates that all of these models have not been able to encompass the magnitude and complexities of ongoing urbanization in developing countries, especially in light of the scale of informal urbanization and worldwide environmental challenges. Section 1.7, then, suggests that the Informal Armatures approach may offer a new way forward.
