The Importance Of Urban Informity

Urban informality has often been associated with marginality, precariousness and social problems. And while it represents a major source of economic support for growing numbers of un¬derpaid, unemployed, and marginalized people, it is neither confined to developing countries nor to marginal settlements. In fact, the resource to informality is a strategy adopted in all social classes, and represents a way of producing cities pretty much every¬where. This does however not imply that urban infor¬mality is a coherent mode of life. The dividing line is between various forms of materialization and accumulation, and the different degrees of condemnation these practices meet by the major society. As can be exempli¬fied by different forms of creative

Fol¬lowing the urban uprisings of recent years, Elisa Ravazzoli and Stefania Tosso have commented on how informal practices are becoming a dominant behavior and vital component for the liveliness and diversity of public space in large parts of the Mid¬dle East –

“The re-appropriation of streets and major public spaces of the city, the increasing inability of the state to exercise its control over space, and the increasing empowered of communities have increased the number of informal practices in public spaces, favored the appearance of a new model of urban interventions, and spurred the rise of community initiatives. People are not simply using their streets as never done before, but they are re-inventing spaces based on their daily needs, embedded in sociocultural

Rather, they represent what ordinary dwellers continuously have to do – if rarely under circumstances of their own choosing – to secure a housing and livelihood in the city. These practices are embedded in the particular setting’s historical and sociocultural construct. They represent the tactical, improvised and often temporal spatial practices of the lived city, as opposed to the strategic, zoned and regulated urban life as represented by abstract master plans. The term spatial should here be understood with reference to the mutual influence of built environ¬ments and the social practices performed within them. Tonkiss has investigated this interplay bet¬ween the social and physical shaping of contemporary cities. She defines urban form in a multidi¬mensional way, arguing that formal planning processes and informal – or less formal – social prac¬tices are equally implied in the shaping of cities. Urban form is not merely an outcome of program¬matic design in¬tentions, but perhaps foremost a result of ordinary residents’ aspirations to make and remake spaces as “conditions for, and effects of, doing something else: seeking shelter or soli¬darity, making a liveli¬hood (or a fortune), marking out social distinction, moving from one place to another.” Therefore, our nets must arguably be casted more widely – beyond the prac¬tices of plan¬ning agencies