Documentation

Symposium
Metropolis Nonformal
Landscape, Infrastructure and Urbanism in the Global South

Thursday, October 13

Regine Keller and Christian Werthmann: Opening of the Symposium

Claudio Acioly: The Nonformal City in a Global Perspective
The chief of housing policy at UN Habitat Claudio Acioly gave a wide overview of global trends in the subject of nonformal cities from a global perspective. In the so called century of the city, many regions in the world face huge urbanization processes which come along with growing income inequalities and social fragmentation. With this in mind urban designers concern have to respond to the needs of urban living conditions while creating social and financial capital. The formation of streets and public space play an essential role to improve the residents‘ lives.

Discussion: Metropolis Nonformal kick-off discussion

Friday, October 14

Introduction

Regine Keller: Welcome by the vice president of TUM

Christian Werthmann: Metropolis Nonformal – Landscape, Infrastructure and Urbanism in the Global South
The symposium’s curator and IAS Fellow Christian Werthmann introduced the framework of the conference and presented five stages of informal development. Through serial imaging of global informal urbanism processes, Werthmann illustrated the multifaceted appearance of spontaneous settlements.

Community

Phillip Thompson: Where Flowers Bloom, so Does Hope: Engagement in the Dark Side of Modernity
The urban planner and political scientist, and professor at MIT Phillip Thompson gave a talk titled „Where flowers bloom, so does hope“ to illustrate his approach for change in low income communities. His speach ranged in scale from a small scale community organising to tapping into the roaming 200 trillion dollar venture capital. Thompson had personally experienced how important and hard won it is to earn the trust of the community and to activate people to participate.

Flavio Janches: Whose city is it? Design Strategies for Marginalized Communities in Buenos Aires city
With very little funding, the architect Flavio Janches realised projects in the slums of Buenos Aires (he calls them „marginalised urban ares“). With university students he made a diagnosis of the place leading to the creation of a network of playgrounds through the slum in abandoned, dangerous spaces. With his second project called „whose city is it?“ Janches intended to support the people’s own upgrading processes by creating networks, places of community and identification.

Discussion: Discussion I – Community
David Gouverneur from the University of Pennsylvania moderated a discussion between the two previous speakers Thompson and Janches relating to community work in informal areas.

Productivity

Gabriel Duarte: Integrating the Informal City: Past Experiences and New Strategies in Rio de Janeiro
The urban designer and architect Gabriel Duarte gave an insight to past experiences and new strategies of integrating the informal city in Rio de Janeiro. Duarte pointed out that favelas follow the same capital dynamics than formal urbanisation thus are part of the same economic matrix and have to be treated accordingly.

Arthur Adeya: Productive Public Space in Kibera, Nairobi
Arthur Adeya, a landscape architect from Nairobi presented the Kounkuey Design Initiative. His focus was not to invest on single sector improvements like infrastructure but to focus on the interconnectedness of the challenges and attempts to deal with the problems in single integrated projects. These are projects which start with physical design but in progress include economy, environmental and social components. Adeya illustrated this with so called productive public space projects in Kibera, one of the major slums in Nairobi, and income generating activities in Kibera’s village Soweto East.

Discussion: Discussion II – Productivity
Under the session’s subject productivity Gabriel Duarte and Arthur Adeya with moderator Phil Thompson discussed how to empower people to communicate and get involved.

Fluidity

Fernando de Mello Franco: Watery Voids, São Paulo
Focusing on both, urban mobility systems and water resource management, São Paulo based architect and professor Fernando de Mello Franco aimed to impart multi functional and cultural values to infrastructure systems. In São Paulo favelas and water issues are deeply connected, because the poor occupy floodplains, marshes and riverbanks. With the project Watery Voids, presented at the 2008 Architecture Bienniel in Rotterdam, de Mello Franco developed a proposal to restructure the monofunctional giant flood basins in São Paulo to function as a network of public spaces.

Anuradha Mathur: Intensive Landscapes
The associate professor at University of Pennsylvania Anuradha Mathur gave an oblique view on her „intensive landscapes“ proposal in Mumbai. Mathur reminded the audience that beaches or riversides have no clear border with distinct edges. They are transition zones between sea and land. She perceives Mumbai, affected by the monsoon, as a city in an estuary, where water (and options) can be anywhere. As a project of extensive landscapes Mathur reflected on the Indian Railway system as an option for a vast system of energy productive space. In a city where there is very little public space, she proposes to work in time rather than in space.

Discussion: Discussion III – Fluidity
In the following discussion with Mathur and de Mello Franco, moderator Gabriel Duarte proposed to completely rethink the role of infrastructure. Designers face the challenge to convert the technical artefact of infrastructure to become a tool for social justice.

Mobility

Haris Piplas: Majority Report ...
Representing absent Hubert Klumpner, Haris Piplas PhD student at ETH Zürich presented exemplary projects in nonformal settlement areas in Caracas designed by Urban Think Tank. The Metro Cable System in Caracas is a mobility example, where Urban Think Tank built a metro cable to access the nonformal settlements on the hill of St. Augustin to transport goods and people. Every metro station has its own program with public functions.

Alejandro Echeverri: Transportation, Education and Public Space in Medellin
Alejandro Echeverri focused in his talk on the subjects transportation, education and public space in Medellín, Colombia. As Medellín’s former chief architect he built a network of incremental and well calibrated strategies. A cable car system makes the steep terrain of the surrounding hills accessible and connects divided neighborhoods if formal or non-formal.

Discussion: Discussion IV – Mobility
In the discussion concerning the section’s topic mobility, moderator de Mello Franco discussed the aspect of visibility versus invisibility given that the majority of investments of the infrastructural projects in Caracas and Medellín projects are underground. It became also clear that implementation of large scale projects is deeply connected to and dependent of political will.

Discussion: Discussion V – Finale
The final discussion included Udo Weilacher, Regine Keller, Sophie Wolfrum and Oliver Heiss, moderated by Christian Werthmann. The group elaborated on the question of first world designers‘ involvement in the global issue of nonformal urbanism.