Produced types of informal public spaces and the new vernacular of the contemporary city

Summary

The emergence of informal production has become one of the critical challenges of urbanization in recent decades. Informal or self-constructed spaces are largely the product of local self-management processes, which play an important role in the physical dynamics of the city. With these activities the inhabitants move beyond the limits of formal strategies in terms of occupation, urban design, planning and construction (Dovey, 2013). Although, there have been various attempts to explain these processes on macro-scale policy and governance issues, since the studies of Solá-Morales (1997) and Busquets (1999), little has been done to understand the generative process of these informal urban forms. Moreover, whereas urban morphology studies have focused on building typology, the public space, has received much less attention (Han, Xu, & Wang, 2014).

The study seeks to introduce a new set of dynamics, that analyses the relation of the morphologies of produced public space and the field of interdisciplinary research on urban informality with the objective to open the discussion on its typological variation. The public free space is seen as an opportunity for leisure alternatives and contributing to vitality of the area (Peregrino, Brito, & Silveira, 2017). Everyday social activities shape those places in terms of how they are used and how they are transformed (Hernandez Garcia, 2010). The aim then is to identify the spatial types of the space, to understand the ways in which local users produce, form, extend and give meaning to their environments. It seeks to explore the relationship between people and open spaces and explain their logics and determinants and how its genesis influences the use of space from a functional and symbolic perspective. By studying the forms, this research finally explores the applicability of informal production as a new vernacularity.

The methodology is based on mixed sequential methods, with a quantitative and a qualitative approach. Drawing on empirical evidence from a case study of Piura (Peru) it considers the morphological patterns as an analytical key and the relationship to the concept of type will be taken as a tool to interpret the connection of elements that make up the space. Direct observation, urban mapping, non-structured conversations and questionnaires are the key research methods. Urban photography is used as supplementary to provide further details.

Through the representations of places and the collection of information, a set of social and spatial attributes is recovered, building a database of 498 cases for its further analyses. For the study seven neighbourhoods have been selected that reveal a variation of settlement context and morphology and seek a fully representation of the city, considering data on urban expansion, spatial boundaries, as well as the urban origin of the sector whether followed official rules or is part of informal land occupation.

The results demonstrate that informal production in public space emerges in different forms in all parts of the city. There seem to be three primary modes or processes, creating, inserting and adding, depending on the urban conditions. It was possible to identify four main types, which show certain characteristics of its physical form. This information linked with attributes of the urban context gives new findings about how people produce the space in different urban conditions. The ongoing research seeks to reach a detailed understanding of its relational, temporal and evolutionary character.

The findings of this work have significant implications for the understanding of informal processes and activities in cities. However, studying informal urbanism requires a multi-scalar thinking about the relations between urban informality and formality in the particular city. According to d’Alençon et al. (2016) the concept of urban informality is a complex preconception and informal activities are linked to other key issues occurring in the urban realm such as negotiation, self-organisation and co-production (Dovey & King, 2012). Moreover, informal urbanism cannot only be seen as a product, but also a process that requires a sophisticated understanding of the ways in which it works in terms of its morphologies (Kamalipour, 2016). Approaches by Rapoport (1988), Oliver (1990) and Stea and Turan (1990) have focused on the people who shape and use the space. As a consequence of socio-economic changes, vernacular constructions are reinvented into objects and spaces that reflect certain geographic and social contexts.

Understanding why informal production of public spaces emerges and the definition of synergies finally allow us to interpret how informal production in public space influences the built environment. Characterizing patterns of public space according to the nature of its attributes helps to configure the structure of the space itself.