Fr 25 Sep 09

urbaninform Symposium

The Future of the Informal

Still some places available - for enquiries: cvanvlodrop@iabr

Micro- and Macro-scale Urbanism in Addis Ababa and São Paulo

With more than half of the world’s population living in urban settings and an ongoing explosion of informal settlements, the nature of our cities is changing. Looking at the sheer number of urban developments makes us aware of the fact that the future of the metropolis will be informal. Whether national and local governments take initiatives for urban redevelopment or not, informal processes represent, in many cases, the only viable alternative to cope with the rapid transformations of the informal city. Top-down
planning has to meet bottom-up practices, new actors enter the game, individual and collective interests have to be negotiated, identities, lifestyles, and social relations are redefi ned. The symposium will ask architects, planners, city offi cials, and community representatives how the future of the informal can be envisioned and how it will take shape. How can we introduce social equity and ecological and economic sustainability in areas that have not been affected by offi cial programs? How can auto-generative processes be engineered? What kind of urban realities do we want to produce and how can we enable the ‘open city’?
In the context of the opening for the 4th IABR, urbaninform is inviting guests from São Paulo and Addis Ababa to discuss the future of the informal.

Participants
Elisabete França (Director of the SEHAB, São Paulo), Maria Teresa Diniz dos Santos (Coordinator Paraisopolis, São Paulo), Gilson da Cruz Rodrigues (Community Leader Paraisópolis, São Paulo), Fernando de Mello Franco (Architect, MMBB, São Paulo), Christian Werthmann (Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Graduate School of Design Harvard University, Cambridge USA), Tsedale Mamo (Head of the Housing Development Office, Addis Ababa), Zegeye Cherenet (Architect, Addis Ababa), Claudio Acioly (Chief Housing Policy Section, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT), Jan Fransen (Deputy Director, Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam).

The online network urbaninform.net was developed by Rainer Hehl and Jörg Stollmann in the context of the 4th IABR exhibition ‘Open City – Designing Coexistence’ and is meant to be an ongoing project to create a growing community of supporters and actors of inclusive practice in the Informal City worldwide.

For information, please contact the IABR, Christa van Vlodrop at cvanvlodrop@iabr.nl

Download the PDF (136 kb) with program of the urbaninform Symposium.