Hernandez, F., Kellett, P. and Allan, L. (eds.) Rethinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America. 2010. Oxford: Berghahn Books. 240 pp. ISBN 978-1-84545-582-8
Reviewed by Melanie Lombard, Global Urban Research Centre, University of Manchester (UK)
[cc image credit: eflon]
The authors of this edited volume make a worthwhile and timely contribution to the field of Latin American urban studies, which will help to fill the current gap in literature on the Latin American city. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to “reimagining the informal in Latin America,” with an emphasis on architectural and urban design perspectives, but also incorporating themes from cultural studies, human geography and anthropology. Interrogating the contemporary conditions of informality in Latin American cities, the authors present ‘the informal’ as a complex set of processes embracing spatial, social, cultural, political and economic aspects. The contributions suggest that we need to rethink our understandings of informality if we are to deal with the informal and particularly “with an urban informality that has become constitutive of the urban condition itself” (Hernandez et al. 2010: 184).
Eleven chapters are organised into two sections, Critical Perspectives and Critical Practices, according to whether contributions are theoretical-historical, or more practical and intervention-based. In fact, both sections present current work by scholars, practitioners, and government institutions, meaning both will have a broad appeal to theorists and practitioners alike. The collection will also hold more a general attraction for those interested in urban issues in the global South, as it provides a useful introduction to some of the key debates in this area, particularly relating to urban informal settlements and housing. Most notably, Chapter 1 takes readers on a whirlwind tour of developments in approaches to urban informal settlements from the 1960s to the present day. Starting with the widespread policies of eradication that characterised responses in the 1950s and 60s, it then touches on the Habitat I conference that took place in Vancouver in 1976 and the self-help debate that precipitated this, discusses the shift in the role of the state from housing provider to enabler, and ends with the ‘return of the slum’ (Gilbert 2007). This chapter will be of particular use to those unfamiliar with these debates, while other chapters discuss specific approaches in more detail, depending on their particular focus.
Despite the proclaimed theoretical bent of the first section, illustrative case studies are employed throughout. The first three chapters discuss Brazilian cities, and are united by a concern with the relationship between informality and modernism. Chapter 2 argues that the influence of modernist architecture can be seen throughout Brazilian favelas, based on Le Corbusier’s Domino template. Chapter 3 explores the informal within the formal, through the activities of urban social movements in Sao Paulo’s public spaces. Chapter 4 offers an interesting exploration of the encroachment of informality in Brasilia, an “exceptional” modernist city. The focus of the next two chapters is on Chile. Chapter 5 explores issues around quality of life in low-income settlements, showing how formal housing policies do not necessarily offer a comprehensive solution. Chapter 6 discusses showing how good design, participation and government subsidies can mitigate the effects of gentrification, using the case of Santiago.
In the book’s second section, contributions focus more heavily on the material outcomes of practice. Using case studies from Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina, the authors explore some of the successes and failures of upgrading, urban design and architecture in this context. Chapter 7 offers an excellent discussion of the pragmatic realities of working with informality, based on the experiences of the Urban Think Tank in Caracas. Chapter 8 takes a similarly grounded view on informality as a means of survival in a socialist society. Chapters 9, 10 and 11 return to the Brazilian example, offering diverse reflections on the Favela Bairro upgrading programme. In particular, Chapter 10 makes a convincing and highly engaging case for incorporating both spatial and social elements into planning for informality, arguing that the social emphasis which has dominated upgrading programmes would benefit from a stronger urban design element, enabling the connection of informal areas with the rest of the city – for example through walkways and multi-level platforms – rather than seeking to ‘resolve’ informality.
The authors’ central argument is that the informal and the formal have become entrenched categories within the urban setting, but that these categories must be rethought if policymakers and researchers are to succeed in understanding and addressing informality. They call for an understanding that goes beyond reductive categories of formal and informal to engage with the multitude of factors that shape Latin American cities, emphasising in particular the agency of settlement dwellers as city builders. The introductory chapter posits an innovative postcolonial theoretical framework as an alternative means of understanding informality, which is implicitly rather than explicitly engaged with by most of the book’s contributors. Despite calls for a ‘postcolonial urban studies’ (Robinson 2006), such a perspective is as yet under-utilised in the Latin American context. Here, the postcolonial approach encompasses both a historical dimension – based on the parallels that exist between today’s urban informality and precolonial urban forms – and a conceptual one, inverting entrenched categories and narrow understandings equating informality with poverty and marginalisation, to celebrate the urban informal.
Indeed, the celebration of the informal is one of the book’s main themes, and this is something it does extremely convincingly. In the most part, the authors avoid ‘favela chic’ stereotyping – in other words, the romanticisation of life in urban informal settlements – as ‘the daily violence of economic exclusion’ (Davis 2006: 202) is always present as context. Indeed, as this book suggests, such places cannot be reduced to symbols of either urban crisis or heroism; they contain everyday struggles, but also complexity, and immense creativity on the part of their residents who construct them in extremely constrained circumstances. The holistic treatment applied here, from a diverse range of perspectives, serves to highlight the prevailing narrowness of most contemporary understandings of the informal city. Given the diversity of approaches, the volume would have occasionally benefited from greater editorial input: for example, some chapters contain a large amount of historical detail that eclipses the extremely interesting case study and empirical material. Most importantly, a concluding chapter would have helped to bring together the disparate threads from across the book’s two halves, and draw out some of the cross-cutting themes arising from the variety of case studies presented. However, despite these minor weaknesses, this book’s major contribution is in its exploration of the social, spatial, cultural and aesthetic processes which constitute the informal city, which is (re)presented as fluid, dynamic, and most importantly, as part of the city. This aspect should ensure its interest to scholars of space and culture; as in rethinking the informal city, we are forced to re-evaluate our understandings of the city itself.
References
Davis M, Planet of Slums. Verso: London, 2006.
Gilbert A, “The Return of the Slum: Does Language Matter?” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31:697-713, 2007.
Robinson, J., Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development, London: Routledge, 2006.