ABSTRACT
Nowadays, it is commonly known that more than 50 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas and more than half of them live in fragile urban conditions in terms of urban services, infrastructure, public transport, formal jobs, land property, equipment and social facilities, sanitation and water access. Urban suburbs and peripheries are no longer a question which can be dealt with as a ‘peripheral’ issue. In this chapter it is argued that urban intervention in this type of territory requires a wider understanding of its logic, patterns, rules and structure, besides its integration in a larger and ‘chameleonic’ notion of urbanity.
