This course gives a broad overview of the role of informal housing in global urbanisation trends.
It provides a historic perspective whereby it demonstrates how populations have generally shifted from predominantly rural to increasingly urban dominance. The geopolitical and economic drivers of these developments are presented. The impact of colonialism in this context is discussed.
On a global scale, significant proportions of inhabitants of rapidly growing urban agglomerations live in informal or non-formalized types of housing, especially in the Global South.
While not every informal settlement automatically displays slumlike living conditions (and not every slum is informal either), a whole range of different forms of usage and property rights exists for diverse settings around the globe.
This session looks at general framework conditions under which informal forms of urbanisation take place and how these cater to the widespread need for affordable housing.
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When cities grow rapidly, their areas expand and the urban-rural frontier shifts and often gets blurred. Peri-urban settlements are at the forefront of this development while formerly agricultural land gets built up. Villages are incorporated into the urban fabric which often entails dramatic shifts in and treats to villagers' livelihoods. National and regional governments, local authorities, as well as industrial and real estate developers, are all stakeholders in these processes and considerable power differentials play out, often entailing various potentials for conflicts.
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Individual, private land property figures as a key element of modern urban land markets. However, for significant parts of the urban population freeholder status remains unaffordable and informal solutions prevail. With access to basic infrastructure often linked to secure land tenure, informality largely entails precarious living conditions which frequently amount to multifaceted health risks. At the same time, the logic of dynamic land markets effectuate increases in the value of informally occupied areas and growing pressure to develop. This frequently leads to displacement of informal residents.
This session investigates the various interdependences of land use, city growth and land markets. It focuses on the challenges which the commodification of housing represents for low-income urbanites in their struggle for affordable accomodation.
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Building upon the previous session we now investigate more in detail how the security of tenure (or lack thereof) in a particular settlement can interrelate with the willingness of local authorities and utility companies to provide access to basic infrastructure services such as water, electricity and sewerage. Furthermore, the impacts of such a provision on residents' health and well-being are investigated. Finally, it is demonstrated how a lack of basic infrastructure furthermore makes affected residents more vulnerable to the effects of climate change such as excess heat, extreme weather events, landslides and flooding.
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In a historic perspective, migration from rural to urban areas has always been an eminent driver for rapid urban growth. Better job opportunities, improved options for education and aspirations for an urban lifestyle still fuel massive population influxes today. However, the economic growth of many affected cities is by far outpaced by the increase of inhabitants and job as well as housing markets struggle to absorb new arrivals. As a consequence, informal businesses are established and informal settlements mushroom. To this backdrop, this session takes a look not only at pull factors which make cities attractive despite the difficult living conditions for many residents but also at pull factors that instigate people to leave the rural hinterlands, such as lack of job opportunities, poor infrastructure and lack of health as well as educational facilities.
While the phenomenon of permanent rural-to-urban migration is widely acknowledged and well studied, much less is talked and known about significant amounts of people who continue to go back to their places of origin on a regular basis. By continuously commuting between jobs in the city and the family in the village millions of mostly male circular migrants not only lead a multi-locational life. It is only by their remittances from work in the cities that rural lifestyles can be sustained in many places. While their prolonged periods of absence has significant impacts on the family left behind, their recurring presence in the cities is often marred with existential difficulties. Not being registered citizens of the urban areas where they work deprives them of many rights associated with citizenship such as access to health care and education. This session thus looks at the implications that this life at the lowest level of the social hierarchy entails for circular migrants.
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As discussed in earlier sessions, many residents of informal urban settlements engage in informal livelihoods such as street vending, hawking, garbage collection, daily wage jobs as well as working in small scale informal businesses. In this session, we now investigate how many of these activities directly depend upon and are interlinked with the usage of space - whether space serves for the production and storage of goods to sell or is key to present and sell such products and services to potential customers. Either way, access to (public) space, mostly on the ground floor, is vital for such livelihoods to be entertained. Likewise, densely knitted social networks help those living in informal settings to cope with daily struggles to make ends meet. Again, spatial proximity plays a crucial role in being able to entertain these social ties. This session thus looks at how lives under informal conditions are sustained in space on a daily basis.
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When people leave their regions in masses due to armed conflict or natural disaster and temporarily settle down in adjacent countries, large-scale refugee camps often sprang up in considerable haste. These camps' logistics require sophisticated management which is often taken charge of by big international organisations. Contrary to the initial hope of being temporary, refugee camps tend to continue existing for many years and their development patterns can be similar to those of urban informal settlements. Additionally, they are often located in the proximity of big urban agglomerations and just like in informal settlements their residents mostly lack financial resources.
This session thus looks at similarities of as well as differences between refugee camps and informal settlements - and how distinctions between them can sometimes get blurred - and tries to figure out which lessons can be learned mutually for improvements and appropriate policies with regards to both.
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While informal settlements and slums are often stigmatised and perceived as embarrassing pockets of visible poverty in cities, this session tries to call attention to the immensely important role performed by these quarters within the fabric of their cities. By providing affordable housing to substantial parts of the population they enable this population's participation in and contribution to the urban economy. Their productive provision of cheap products and services frequently form local economies' backbones. For so doing, residents depend upon access to this affordable segment of the housing market. Location of such housing stock near inner-city job opportunities and markets is a crucial asset which helps to reduce daily expenses for commuting. Likewise, informal settings offer the flexibility to build incrementally whenever resources for further construction are available in a particular household. These are just some of the assets and strengths investigated in this session which characterize informal settlements and make them a viable option for low-income city residents.
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Mobilization of residents stands at the beginning of most strives to enact improvements to residents' daily lives in informal settlements. Often this mobilization is sparked by threats of eviction. This session introduces several methods and tools of mobilization in general and demonstrates how activities such as house enumeration as well as a socio-economic assessment of the residents not only kickstart participation of residents in decision-making processes concerning their settlement but also renders valuable data which can be exploited in negotiation with local authorities, administration and utility companies.
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When it comes to housing policies for informal settlers, relocation and rehabilitation have often been - and still are in many regions - a prime tool applied by national and regional governments in cities. The goal is to provide low-income households with standard housing, often in multi-storey apartment blocks. While building codes and by-laws can be respected in such developments and residents are provided with taxable and (often also) sellable real estate, provision of basic infrastructure and continuing maintenance frequently pose serious problems. In this session, we investigate scientific findings of several decades which highlight numerous deficiencies of relocation schemes - not least also their severe limitations in terms of quantity and their inability to meet prevailing housing needs.
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This second session on different types of housing programs introduces the concept of in-situ upgrading of existing informal settlements and slums. Acknowledging residents' capacity to incrementally build for themselves, this approach rather focuses on the provision of basic and/ or improved infrastructure on settlement level. This gives residents the opportunity for improved health and well being. At the same time, they stay within their accustomed spatial and social setting and - most importantly - can continue pursuing their usual livelihoods.
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