Urban villages and informal settlements as protagonists of urban futures

Abstract

Urban villages, defined as ‘communities engulfed by rapid urbanization’, often are regarded as receding phenomena, destined to gradually disappear or abruptly be relinquished as their economic base in agriculture or craft is displaced by the industrial and services sector. However, resonances in structure and modus operandi link ancestral to informal settlements and to an informal economy that provides new employment opportunities. Hence, the complex mechanisms by which urban villages and informal settlements are able to resist as well as absorb urban development, merit renewed attention. In a series of collaborations with local academic and community partners, I have documented three urban villages, each exemplary for a particular model and context of development. The diverse spectrum of strategies and formats of resilience spawned by the three communities inform methods of enquiry into how cities might learn from urban villages. I examine three communities, situated in Amman, Valparaiso and Bangkok, exploring first their strategic responses to context and topography, and second, the pivotal role of inherited or remembered spatial typologies in processes of urbanization driven by feedback obtained continuously from the actions and experience of construction and inhabitation.