Slums Informal settlements

Paulo Silva

*University of Aveiro, Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 AVEIRO, Portugal

[email protected]

Ben Gurion University, 29.06.16

Paulo Silva

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Planning theory, into planning dilemmas

2. Complexity theory: cities as a space for selforganisation

3.

Shaping Portuguese cities: interactions of informal settlements and planning institutions

4.

How self-organisation explains the rise of a more responsive legal frame

5. Conclusions: reflections on and contributions for planning theory and practice


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SILVA, P., FARRALL, H., (2016), 'Lessons from informal settlements: a 'peripheral' problem with self-organising solutions', in The Town planning review 87(3): 297-319, DOI: 10.3828/tpr.2016.21 SILVA, P., FARRALL, H., (2016), 'From Informal to formal: What can be learned from reviewing 50 years of Portuguese models, policies and politics', in Dynamics and Resilience of Informal Areas, pp. 25-42, ed. Springer, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-29948-8_2


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 In a weaker position as a not anymore state

controlled activity (2016 Lisbon about spaces of dialogue, 2015; Prague in definite space and fuzzy responsibilities; Utrecht’s 2014 AESOP from control to co-evolution)

 A debate on normative and collaborative

models, as well as the role of planners in the planning processes

 Signs of what can be addressed as three

‘spatial planning dilemmas’


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 Rigidity as guaranteeing equal treatment of citizens before the

law

 Flexibility as something needed to cater to individual

circumstances

 Flexibility is claimed to be necessary to deal with contexts of

constant change (Hillier, 2011)

 The need for flexibility is seen in combination with more stable,

rigid and traditional ways of planning (Gonçalves, 2015).

 Bottom-up decision being the future of

local planning (Gallent, 2013)

 Underlining ambiguities and tensions in

those processes (Carpenter, 2014)

 Participation needs a leitmotiv (Parker &

Murray, 2012)

THE ROLE OF PLANNERS  As leader and as co-worker (Isserman, 2014)  How to see planners role in a context of change, of conflicting

driving forces?

 The urban system as a complex adaptive system (CAS)  In which hierarchy is present, more precisely we can talk about

hierarchical complex adaptive systems (HCAS) – (Holling et al., 2002;  The latter (HCAS) is key, since we are dealing with two subsystems

   

– planning institutions and informal settlements (Tranberg Hansen and Vaa, 2004; Dovey, 2012; Innes, 2013) Fluctuation tend to shift system into instability (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984) Trigger events (Smith and Gemmil, 1991) will end in a cascade of non-linear effects, determining the system’s reorganisation. Self-organisation as ‘the spontaneous evolution of coordination’ (Heylighen, 2010) In HCAS, power relations are irrelevant.


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 the capacity of individuals to s-o in response to stress and

problems is well documented ( Smith and Stevens, 1996; Innes et al., 2010, Shkliarevsky, 2015)

 S-o processes derive motivation from dissatisfaction to wishes

and hopes (Blummer, 1969)

 Informal settlements are the spatial product of s-o (Roy, 2011)

and the space for ‘de facto’ rules (Van Horen, 1999; Wigle, 2010)

 S-o implimies coordination, to minimise friction and maximise

synergy (Heylighen, 2013)

 In spatial planning they occur among peers (Boonstra, Boolens,

2011)


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 agents (citizens or organisations) are part of the urban system,

operate within the same spatial scope, have local information / knowledge and share the same goals; they include landowners, practitioners from municipalities and planning institutions:

 in horizontal networks (i.e. ‘among peers’) for example,

between landowners, but also between landowners and public institutions;

 in vertical networks (the agents belong to distinct hierarchical

levels), control / power positions (e.g. associated with authority or legality) are irrelevant in the context of this process of selforganisation; although power relations existed between municipalities and informal urban areas, they are clearly relegated to a second level.


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 HCAS can adapt and evolve (Kaufmann, 1991)  Evolution depends on diversity and path dependency (Levin,

1998)

 Co-evolution, a particular form of evolution; co-evolving

subsystems are unpredictable (Winder et al., 2005, Batty and Marshall, 2012, Marshall, 2012)

 In spatial planning, these concepts have been used mostly as

metaaphors, dificult to conceptualise (UNSHP, 2003, Rammel et al., Batty and Marshall 2009, Allen, 2012)


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Rationale Spatial planning

Selforganisation

Co.-evolution

Norms and Rules

Between rigidity and Including flexibility stability and dynamics

Implying maleability

Hierarchy

Between top-down and bottom-up processes (including power relations)

As connections between HCAS levels (excluding power relations)

Evolution between subsystems (hierarchy is absent)

Planner and Decisionmaking

The role of planner between between supervisor and enabler

Planner as coworker

Planner as enabler


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Informal settlements are considered here to be those areas that are: (a) occupied without following legal procedures; and, (b) developed without approved urban and architectural plans. ‘Planning institutions’ to address norms and rules as well as agencies and organisations (e.g. municipalities, the political and technical bodies closest to the informal settlements, and the national Parliament, which plays an important role in making and approving laws).


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“Various projects and urban development programmes have been implemented in countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain in the last 20 years. Although current needs may differ, these countries can be an important source of good practices for others in the UNECE region facing similar challenges.” (UNECE, 2009, p. 62) SILVA, P., FARRALL, H., (2014), ‘From informal to formal: what can be learned from reviewing fifty years of Portuguese models, policies and politics’, Proceedings Book of 6th International Conference Responsive Urbanism in Informal Areas, Cairo, 330-346


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1978 – 63.000 dwellings in Lisbon Metropolitan Area (out of total 83.000) 1982/83 – 300.000 inhabitants (over 12 % of Lisbon Metropolitan Area population, in 12000 hectares)


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Slums

Informal settlements (with land tenure)

Until 1974

Inside larger cities | insufficient initiatives

Remote suburbia | noncooperation phase

1974-1976

SAAL – Ambulatory Local Support System - launched

Self-organized structures | survey legalization of houses

(experimentation)

(experimentation)

Institutionalization of social housing solutions (SAAL is

Planning initiatives | exceptional solutions

extinguished)

(experimentation)

1976-1986

Since 1986 1993 – eradication program (metropolitan areas of Lisboa and Porto, in 1996 extended to other cities)

2005 – program to regenerate obsolete social housing areas

Increasing interaction with institutions | 1995 – AUGI Act, successively changed (experimentation | innovation)

i. s. main characteristics More stable professional, economic situation Lack of infrastructures and public facilities

Suburban pattern Remote spaces

aim for free space Ben Gurion University, 29.06.16

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Decree-laws by Governments (tend to be singleparty composed)

Acts by Parliament (tends to be more stable and more diverse in political parties’ composition, they keep specialized commissions with all political forces represented, sometimes through decades)

And legal frameworks conceptually different

People’s aims | different settings

(landownership) Same institutions | different behaviours

(Municipalities as “providers” and as “enablers”) Different institutions | different models

(Parliament broader than government sectorial vision) Different priorities | different approaches

(Welfare state and Do it yourself urbanism) Ben Gurion University, 29.06.16

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 Pressures: visual, social, ecological

impacts, housing

 Settlers’ Resources:

Land – long-last institutional behaviour change a strong ally of housing rights political visibility extra pressure on national institutions municipalities breaking hierarchical chain direct access to the legislator – the parliament Ben Gurion University, 29.06.16

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 Pressures are

political)  Different

various (but at the end, always

solutions (depending on how resources

are distributed)

 Governance does not lead the process but is

by the process (to be explored)


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Acts and decree-laws are conceptually different

Governments tend to be single-party composed |

Parliament tends to be more stable and

more diverse in political parties’ composition | they keep specialized commissions with all political forces represented, sometimes through decades.


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 questions the dichotomist perception (of the “developed world’s” and the “developing world’s”) of

informal settlements

 Same national context with different

approaches

 Depending not on informality but on

landownership


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 Landownership’s

impact beyond the physical solution

 Responsible by the level of

intervention) of settlers

commitment (and

Affecting other agents’ behaviours


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 Innovative outcomes were transfered to the general spatial planning

 land registration procedures,  possibility of plans to be made by public institutions, by these in

cooperations with landowners or only by landowners

 Became so far the most

successfull environment to test

solutions adopted by the general law (land adjustement, distribution of costs and benefits - perequação)


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Requiring very specific social and political conditions

Depending on pressure  And resources’

distribution among different agents


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early days of landowners’ associations Between landowners/residents and institutions (which Present in the

leaded to the AUGI act in 1995)

Until

today with regular law improvements


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Crucial to establish

trust among partners (result of

prolonged interactions) Deep

motivation (commitment to a personal

project, service to a community, assumption of political responsibility)

(not to solve an isolated problem but) to find broader

solutions


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Between individual housing aims (in the 1960’s) to a responsive parliament’s act in 1995

Breaking hierarchical distance (between

marginalized individuals and national institutions)

Creating channels of communication (between municipalities and the national parliament)


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 Two levels of self-organising processes,  Involving informal settlements and planning institutions  In relation to evolutionary and co-evolutionary paths  As the result of self-organising processes.


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 (PH1): Initial rural land gradually became incorporated into the

layout of pre-urban land.

 (PH2) ‘forming’: some plots were already in the hands of the

group that would later self-organize, who did not know their future neighbors very well.

A major tipping point occurred with the 1974 Revolution.  (PH3) ‘storming’ – Residents and landowners got together to

campaign for better housing conditions

 (PH4) ‘norming’: establishment of legal status and identity.

 (PH5) ‘performing’: corresponds to a period of activity by these

associations identified as to cooperate with municipalities in order to solve the lack of infrastructures and promote cultural and sports activities, among other things.


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 (L1): the first level of self-organization - residents’ associations  Self-organization process between residents’ associations and

the bottom level of planning institutions, the municipalities  Process of social interaction around housing needs

 Different initial focuses: informal settlements on the legalisation of

unplanned informal settlements; municipalities on urban management  Informal settlements and planning institutions learned to selforganise and the scope widened from illegal settlements and urban management (the mismatch of focuses) to the urban plans and legal allotments (which became the common focus).  (L2): Technical support offices resulted from the emergence of

a new structure: they were made up of members of residents’ associations and technical staff from municipalities in order to produce plans to allow the urbanisation of informal settlements


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 Planning institutions and informal settlements have changed in

more than three decades;

 Self-organisation processes have been clear since 1974  Characterised by motivating powers and tipping points,  Establishing new paths, yet stable and malleable

 Dynamic subsystems that interact in a co-evolutionary way.  Diversity is present and selection is inherent to the choice of a

particularly complicated case – Quinta do Conde – as an unexpected pilot test for a new structured legal framework.


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 To be open to self-organise demonstrates an unusual

malleability on the part of planning institutions in particular to solve housing problems and to deal with the environmental impact of informal settlements.

 For eastern European regions in particular, there may be

potential for lessons to be learned from political, social and economic similarities with the Portuguese context. Recent changes in their political regimes and their relatively new European Union membership echo the Portuguese experience of the 1970s and 1980s.


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 The peripheral nature of IS; it lends enough invisibility to

maintain them as an intangible phenomenon for three decades, including continuous interactions at different levels with PI.

 The premises for this seem to be that PI and IS operate with the

same spatial scope, have local information and knowledge and share the same goals, despite belonging to different hierarchical levels.


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 In improving their norms and rules.  Resulting in an unplanned national experiment on alternative

spatial management models

 which, eventually, also contributed to lawmaking at a national

level, the

 Portuguese case suggests that local, self-organised informal

settlements and less-than-flexible planning institutions can jointly coordinate and explore solutions.


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 Flexibility was found in the way management solutions were

designed, due to the fact that two hierarchical structures evolved and co-evolved.

 Municipalities showed organisational flexibility by facilitating

hybrid structures (local technical offices) in collaboration with informal settlements.

 The Parliament allowed flexibility in the way they designed

management models for informal settlements, learning from specific cases and not trying to impose rigid and singleoriented procedures.

 Flexibility did not imply ‘soft’ or ‘fuzzy’ rules, but simply a

greater awareness of the specificities that rules have to address.


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 The long-term nature of the case study made it possible to

identify the transformation of an initially bottom-up movement into a two-way dynamic.

 It shows that the bottom-up versus top-down dichotomy can be

an incomplete and therefore misleading representation of a system’s dynamics.

 The successful articulation of PI and IS subsystems depended

more on the emergence of key actors at different crucial moments in time.

 This suggests that both top down and bottom up, are valid and

compatible.

 Nevertheless, institutions rarely relinquish power and consider

that this might have happened in very exceptional conditions.


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 The process of interaction between PI and IS is rather striking.  They seem to have been very useful in the experimentation

phase, working with communities, managing data, producing plans and applying pre-existing rules.

 In contrast to other spatial planning lawmaking processes,

planners, architects, geographers and engineers, as professional groups, were absent from the debate of the AUGI Act.

 Apparently, they were not a key player and this might be

illustrative of how informal settlements were perceived: as representations of the non-city, away from the spotlight of large urban events that were about to happen in Portugal.


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 The analysis of the development of Portugal’s illegal

settlements and the responses it triggered from planning institutions highlights the importance of understanding pathdependent and co-evolutionary characteristics of long-term urban development processes.

 Under specific conditions, room for new solutions was

(unexpectedly) created.

 This questions the productivity of traditional action/reaction

types of planning for guiding these development processes.


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