InfUr-
The Informal Urbanism Research Hub at the Melbourne School of Design
InfUr- is an assemblage of researchers and projects focused on the role of urban informality in the creative production of cities of both the Global South and North.
This includes the many ways urban informality intersects with formal urban systems, and a better understanding of the logic and resilient capacities embodied in self-organised urbanism. The Hub embodies a shared interest in how power is practised as a form of self-organisation, and in the struggles of marginalised populations to assert their right to the city.
The built environment disciplines and professions have traditionally focused on the formally authorised frameworks through which the city is planned, designed, constructed and governed. Yet all cities are produced by both formal and informal practices. Informal urbanism is not necessarily illegal, rather it is self-organised. It is not separate from but intersects with the formal structures of state regulation and control, often in reaction to practices of displacement, marginalisation and exclusion.
The InfUr- acronym evokes the ways informal urbanism infuses the formal city and often infuriates the state. Informal urbanism is the original or Ur-form of the city and of citizenship – it puts the Ur back into urbanism.
Co-Directors: Kim Dovey, Crystal Legacy, Patrick Cobbinah, and Ashraful Alam
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Kim Dovey and Reden Recio The view from the Board of Regents Room in Quezon Hall, the administration building of the University of the Philippines (UP) System, reveals the core of the UP Diliman campus as a beautiful and well-manicured place—a vast green lung within the dense and often intense Metropolitan Manila. As is less […]
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Recently InfUr- researchers Elek Pafka and Viviana Silva published an article in City Monitor: a platform for publishing articles examining the future of the world’s cities and global mandates for more responsible urban policy. Read the article here
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In December 2023 InfUr- co-director Crystal Legacy took centre stage at the State of Australasian Cities conference 2023 in Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington to deliver the Pat Troy Memorial Lecture. Crystal began her talk by reflecting on the legacy of Pat Troy and “his desire to provoke debate to progress more just planning. […]
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This seminar took place on Thursday 16th November 2023 with Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning Patrick Cobbinah. Abstract: Informality has become central to urban sustainability and one of the most polemically debated topics in modern urban studies and human geography. In this presentation, my main argument is that informality in its current conception does not comprehend fully the […]
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MSD Atrium. October 12 – November 3 2023
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Recently InfUr- researchers Kim Dovey, Elek Pafka, Mattijs van Oostrum, Tanzil Shafique, and Ishita Chatterjee published an article in the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit: a website dedicated to disseminating recent research in a journalistic manner. Read the article here
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This seminar took place on Thursday 19th October 2023. This seminar celebrates the launch of the Atlas of Informal Settlement by Kim Dovey, Matthijs van Oostrum, Tanzil Shafique, Ishita Chatterjee and Elek Pafka. The book is a comparative study of the morphogenesis of 51 contemporary settlements across the globe. It shows how settlement morphology adapts to different contexts of […]
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This seminar was recorded on Monday 11th September 2023. Abstract: We argue in this paper that misunderstandings between the market-oriented construct, rent, and custom-oriented constructs of tenure, have profound consequences for communities in Port Vila. We illustrate the mismatch between the expectations of customary tenants and the interpretation of these arrangements by the courts. We use as illustration […]