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 and Crystal Legacy
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Seminar and book launch – The Atlas of Informal Settlement
On behalf of InfUr- I warmly invite you to the upcoming seminar and book launch of The Atlas of Informal Settlement with InfUr- Co-Director and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design Kim Dovey. 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 […]
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Pem Rent, Pem Graon: How custom is confused with informality in Port Vila, Vanuatu
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 […]
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InfUr- Seminar with David O’Brien — The Bower Studio: Designing and Constructing with Indigenous Communities?
The following seminar with Associate Professor David O’Brien was recorded on Thursday August 24th 2023. Abstract: This seminar will outline the award-winning work of the Bower Studio projects – working with indigenous partners to design and build community infrastructure projects. David O’Brien is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Melbourne. He has worked in community development and […]
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SEED Session: Engaging with Global South Urbanisms / 26 July 2023 [Hybrid Seminar]
Presentations: Phia van Greunen and Debapriya Karmakar Session Chair: Daniel de Oliveira Vasconcelos Urban ‘informal’ settlement: The emergence of public space It is easy to associate public space and informal settlements with resistance. Public space is always produced through geographies of power that legitimise certain forms of action while marginalising other ways of being. Urban […]
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Public launch of a new book entitled “COVID-19 and informal workers in Asian cities: Impact, response and implications for urban recovery”
As COVID-19 took hold across local and international borders in 2020 and 2021, over 1.6 billion informal workers were estimated to have been adversely impacted by mobility restrictions and other ‘lockdown’ measures to tackle the coronavirus crisis. In the Global South, the pandemic has severely affected the sprawling megacities in Southeast and South Asia that […]
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SEED-CERN Session*: Post urban-rural frontiers? Examining diverse island urbanisms in the Philippines / 29 June 2023 [Hybrid Seminar]
Presentation: Aireen Andal and Andre Ortega Session Co-chairs: Reden Recio and Ethel Villafranca Islands tend to conjure images of tourist beaches or rural peripherality. They rarely figure into the urban studies literature as theoretically generative spaces that can reinvigorate urban knowledge production. In empirical terms, urban studies mainly foreground inland spaces and barely represent the […]
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InfUr- Seminar with Michael E. Smith — Top-Down and Bottom-Up Planning in Pre-Modern Cities
Michael E. Smith
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Seminar with Crystal Legacy and Matt Novacevski — Legitimacy-making and Public Participation: Local Governments’ Use of Standardised Frameworks
Crystal Legacy, Matt Novacevski