Approaching Informal: A Study of Slum Phenomena and Future Sustainable Development Processes

Abstract

Today more than half of the global population lives in urban communities, and half of that again, or, one sixth of the global population live below the poverty line. The fastest urbanising communities are slums, informal settlements predominately on the edges of cities, often without adequate water, sewage and other resources and consequently with high levels of otherwise preventable disease. This thesis investigates how architects and architectural practices can contribute to sustainable slum redevelopments and what approaches and strategies need to be applied in order for safer and healthier communities to emerge. The last 60 years have seen many changes in the way slum redevelopment has been conceptualised from total clearance and removal to more participatory approaches by aid agencies where a slum community is consulted regarding development. These methods however frequently create a culture of aid reliance and are not sustainable when aid is withdrawn. This thesis considers how the informal development strategies which already exist in slum communities can be supported and enhanced to produce development which is self sustaining. Photographs taken during fieldwork in South America, supplemented by images from around the world sourced on the internet, were analysed to develop a thematic understanding of processes in informal slum development. This was followed by an investigation of current cases of informal development processes in New Zealand and overseas to see how these approaches correlated with themes emerging from the analysed photographic data. This research shows the importance of creating connections between the slum and city, understanding of space in informal settlements, identifying resilience and existing sustainability and harnessing self-building within the slum community. Architects need to focus through the lens of local logic when working in informal settlements, ensuring that assistance is integrated with the current workings of the informal society. Such sustainable approaches to development increase community resilience as socio-economic and social-cultural relationships and markets are supported. This research also has implications for more formal societies. Both man-made and natural crises have resulted in squatter settlements in 'developed' countries such as the United States of America. More recently, Christchurch, New Zealand has been hit by major earthquakes, which shattered much of the infrastructures for thousands of people in suburban areas who were forced to develop local solutions to problems where the authorities were overwhelmed.