ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to extend and enrich ideas of place and placelessness. It describes place from a perspective that emerges out of the global south by investigating the particularities of informal urbanisms. The chapter explains a process by which collective inquiry leads to critical and democratic ways of shaping place. It focuses on Edward Relph's ideas and suggests how they might be extended by examining the gaze through which people view place, including the dominant view from the global north that tends to be uncritically universalized. The chapter also describes a project of comparative and empirical investigations in Sao Paulo and New York City as a collaboration between Parsons School of Design and University of Sao Paulo. It presents the comparative investigation reveals that informality and formality like place and placelessness are in fact intertwined and that practice helps engage with the constantly changing nature of place.
