Boano C, Astolfo G. (2016) Informal Urbanism, city building processes and design responsibility I quaderni di Urbanistica 3 4(8):51-60 01 (original) (raw)
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Studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2018
Informality has exerted a longstanding and special fascination for architects. Throughout the last hundred years, the unplanned or un-designed has been interpreted as morphological reference, as place of necessary action and as the architectural "other," that is, as instance of alternative urbanities and everyday practices, which might put the profession into crisis and stimulate new conceptual horizons. Over the past two decades, a special interest coming from architectural practice and theory alike has coagulated around encounters between design and informal settlements. This has generated an "informal architecture" constituted of small-scale disciplinary means, or polite practices, as well as a series of converging discourses, questioning or trying to change the socio-political and professional landscape. These were produced most often in curated events and publications which concentrated varied directions, projects and processes, in an attempt to offer common identities and representations. Valeria Federighi's book proposes a very useful and necessary epistemological examination of such representations. The book is triggered by the scientific difficulty in approaching the relationship between architecture and informality, all the more disarming in an era of global flows and interwoven determinations.
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The everyday life of a city can generate informality in urban space, particularly in emerging economies. Using the Grounded theory approach, this paper looks at how urban space in a market precinct is negotiated through tactics of street vendors and strategies of the government. It draws upon Herbert Simon’s work on decision making to show how a vendor moves from an existing situation to a preferred situation and terms this as situation satisfaction. It suggests a theoretical framework to understand the relation between the logic, decision and action of stakeholders, to resolve the conflict between urban planning criteria and ground reality.
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