Forces at play

The IA approach focuses on addressing the urgent demands of the urban poor. Twenty-first century cities must efficiently use resources, diversify economic drivers, and embrace effective forms of management and governance. To work towards a future less reliant on fossil fuels, the IA approach prioritizes low energy consumption by reinserting compact, walkable, and mixed-use areas into urban habitats. These were all features of preindustrial and informal cities. While incorporating these well-established principles of city making, the IA approach also tackles contemporary challenges of developing countries, such as scarcity of food and water, sanitation and health, waste management, efficient mobility, information access, economic drivers, political participation, and peaceful living. David Grahame Shane argues in his book Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective that the post-war city was characterized by models that relied on cheap

oil and mounting globalization forces.1 These forces concentrated new economic activities in aging urban centers, which lost their residential population as cities expanded outward and colonized new territories.2 In industrialized nations this manifested in the decay of pre-oil urban centers and the emergence of autooriented suburbs. Cities of developing countries followed a similar pattern, with wealthier residents moving to suburbia as poorer immigrants and city residents began occupying the depopulating urban centers. Poor immigrants re-densify older urban areas in crowded and unhealthy tenements, in addition to introducing a diversity of informal, commercial activities. However, it wasn’t long before the low-income population began squatting on the urban fringe, giving birth to peripheral and underserviced or deurbanized informal settlements. The formal and the informal peripheries were to become predominantly singleuse residential areas. As population increased, with higher growth rates within the lower-income groups, the inner cities changed roles again. The tenements were gradually replaced by higher real-estate commercial-oriented activities, and the informal periphery expanded further. Growing physical separation of the wealthier suburban areas from the peripheral informal settlements would result in social segregation, affecting the performance of the entire city. The predominantly informal city of the future must carefully address social segregation by diminishing the disparities between both urban forms and tackling the dysfunctional conditions present in many developing cities today. The formal and the informal areas must be handled as integral components of a rich and evolving urban ecosystem. In order to respond to this challenge, the wealthier suburbs must be sustainably reimagined, requiring re-densification, creating new mixed-use sub-centers, incorporating jobs, and encouraging social mixing. Similarly, the peripheral informal settlements must be transformed, incorporating local and metropolitan services, amenities, public spaces, infrastructure, efficient forms of mobility, and employment. Improved urban conditions in existing informal areas and the inclusion of formal design and managerial aspects in the IA fostered territories will also contribute to accelerated social mobility and mixing. Strategies acting on the urban periphery-which usually corresponds to suburban patterns in the industrialized world-as well as on peripheral informality, should focus on making these areas less dependent on older city centers and main city corridors where jobs, services, and amenities are generally concentrated,

forcing the suburbanites to commute and consume more energy. These changes, in addition to the reinforcement of public transportation, will help ease the dependence on private vehicles and reduce vulnerability to energy shortages. Sustainable practices favoring re-densification and mixed-use formal districts may be plausible in suburbia, in new urban expansion areas, and in central locations. These trends are already emerging in some wealthier nations, fostered by creative zoning. However, the growth of the predominantly self-constructed city, accommodating the needs of the poorer groups, will inevitably occur on the urban fringe, which significantly expands city boundaries. Since the majority of the population must self-construct their neighborhoods because they cannot access the formal real-estate market, very different proactive managerial and design moves will be required to favor mixed-use, balanced, and socially integrated cities. This is the main challenge of the IA approach. It is important to clarify this aspect. One of the most valuable commodities for poorer groups is to have access to very cheap or free land to begin to construct

their shelters. Densification of the districts for the very low income groups will occur gradually as they consolidate and expand their dwellings, and not through a change of zoning or the construction of formal housing or mixed-use projects. Consequently, unless there are tracts of underutilized land within the existing city limits that can readily be made available for this purpose, which is not usually the case, proactive land banking and public policy could offer an opportunity to reimagine a more sustainable future for the predominantly informal city. According to the IA approach, these instruments of land management can then assure the successful combination of self-constructed areas with a diversity of uses for other social groups and include other formal interventions. This is among the critical foundations for the formal and informal cities to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship and become an integral system. Balancing the expansion of new informal settlements with the existing formal and informal cities is crucial for creating more sustainable cities. This is only one of a long list of considerations that should be addressed by the IA approach. Other considerations include the following: the protection of valuable agricultural land, water conservation, food security, waste reduction, the provision of materials for the construction of the self-constructed districts, energy production, and alternative modes of economic production.