Informal Urbanization in Latin America

Various kinds of informal and extra-legal settlements—commonly called shantytowns, favelas, or barrios—are the prevailing type of urban land use in much of the developing world. United Nations estimates suggest that there are close to 900 million people living in squatter communities worldwide, with the number expected to increase in the coming decades. Informal Urbanization in Latin America investigates prevailing strategies for addressing informal settlements, which started to shift away from large-scale slum clearance to on-site upgrading in Latin America over the last 40 years, by improving public spaces, infrastructure and facilities. The cases in this book range from one micro intervention (the Villa Tranquila Project in Buenos Aires) to three large-scale government-run projects: the celebrated Favela Bairro Program in Rio de Janeiro, the social housing program in São Paulo and the famous Proyectos Urbanos Integrales Approach in Medellín. The cases show a collaborative and sensitive transformation of landscape and public space, and provide designers and planners with the tools to develop better strategies that can mitigate the volatility that the residents of non-formal neighborhoods are exposed to. The book is a must-read for all who are interested or working in the global urbanization as well as social equity.

"If you are a professional architect and urban planner, a scholar or a student of urban planning and design, or if you work in local and city governments, you will find this book extremely useful. It deals with the biggest challenge of city governments in the twenty-first century: informal urbanization and the appearance of slums, informal settlements and settlements where nearly 1 billion people live today. The Coronavirus pandemic exacerbated the problem and showed that we need to change and urgently transform these areas. How to do that? The book provides the reader with real answers and practical examples from Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Medellín on how to transform slums and informal settlements into livable and safe neighborhoods and integrate them into the urban fabric and planning systems of cities. This is not an easy task and the book is rich in testimonies of those directly involved in real actions that transform ideas into reality."— Claudio Acioly, urban planner, international housing and development expert"Based on long-term research over four case studies, this book investigates the non-formal sector of urban growth in Latin America. Writing from a landscape-architectural perspective, Werthmann puts the geophysical landscape in focus for his in-depth analysis. With its anticipatory and multi-scalar approach, this book is a highly relevant contribution to the debate about improvement of urban ecologies."— Andres Lepik, Director of the Architekturmuseum, Technical University of Munich, "If you are a professional architect or urban planner, a scholar or a student of urban planning and design, or if you work in local or city governments, you will find this book extremely useful. It deals with the biggest challenge for city governments in the twenty-first century: informal urbanization and the appearance of slums, informal settlements and settlements, where nearly 1 billion people live today. The Coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem and showed that we need to change and urgently transform these areas. How to do that? The book provides the reader with real answers and practical examples from Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Medellín on how to transform slums and informal settlements into livable and safe neighborhoods, integrating them into the urban fabric and planning systems of cities. This is not an easy task and the book is rich in testimonies of those directly involved in real actions that transform ideas into reality."— Claudio Acioly, urban planner, international housing and development expert"Based on long-term research over four case studies, this book investigates the non-formal sector of urban growth in Latin America. Writing from a landscape-architectural perspective, Werthmann puts the geophysical landscape in focus for his in-depth analysis. With its anticipatory and multi-scalar approach, this book is a highly relevant contribution to the debate about improvement of urban ecologies."— Andres Lepik, Director of the Architekturmuseum, Technical University of MunichWerthmann’s book shows that although informal settlements are often the site where cities are first and most impacted by rapid climate change, they have been excluded from formal planning processes. As a result, designers often assume that informal settlements lack plans and order and are not familiar with the informal plans and order that do exist. Thus, the book would be useful as a supplementary resource for the disciplines of urban planning, public policy, urban design, and landscape architecture where designers and policymakers seek to understand the logic of informal environments, and as a practical sourcebook for helping communities to prepare for uncertain future conditions. [...] In sum, learning about landscape-oriented upgrading through the context of Latin America can help to advance variations in response to urban informality—climate change interactions elsewhere- Kristine Stiphany- Journal of Urban Affairs

Christian Werthmann is a Professor of Landscape Architecture and Design at the Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany, with extensive professional and academic experience in Europe and the United States. During his time as an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2004–2012), he started to investigate informal urbanization and disaster zones with a focus on Latin America. His investigations have led to numerous publications, exhibitions and conferences since. In the past few years, he published with, Jessica Bridger, Metropolis Nonformal (2016), curated the "Dangerous Landscapes" conference in Hannover (2017) and co-curated the exhibition "Out There. Landscape Architecture on Global Terrain" at the Architectural Museum Munich (2017). His latest research project, Inform@Risk, is concerned with the development of integrative early warning systems in the barrios of Medellín (2020).