This chapter analyzes the urban form of informal settlements in the Western Balkans. Informal housing is now a permanent fixture of the urban landscape in this region. Given the widespread and increasing scale of informal settlements, it is important to record their spatial qualities and compare them to informal settlements elsewhere. A five-point framework is … Continue reading
This article analyzes media representations of squatters and their settlements in five case studies in the Western Balkans: the capitals of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, and Serbia, drawing on a database of 300 newspaper articles, dating from 1990 to 2015. The analysis reveals eight themes. The press has: (1) questioned the state’s legitimacy to … Continue reading
On Wednesday, UQ|UP’s Dorina Pojani delivered a guest lecture for the students of architecture and planning at the Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien). The lecture was part of Master’s level course, led by Mamica Burda and Catalin Berescu, which this year is focusing on housing informality in the Balkans. Dorina’s guest lecture was on … Continue reading
UQ Indonesia field trip course has just started. Twenty two UQ students from planning, environmental management, GIS, development practice and social sciences and 18 UGM (Universitas Gadja Madah) from planning has just started their annual studio course. The course takes places in Yogyakarta, Indonesia for two weeks. Students work with urban and rural communities on … Continue reading
While a substantial amount of study of informal settlements has been undertaken, they remain largely unstudied in terms of urban form. The purpose of this article is to set forth a conceptual framework, which considers the context in which informality takes place, the settlement itself, the houses contained therein, the dwellers of those houses and … Continue reading
A new edited book on urban informality is out! The ‘Rutledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization‘ has been edited by Roberto Rocco and Jan van Ballegooijen at Delft University of Technology. It contains a collection of 25 case studies on urban informality, which examine the processes of informal urbanization in different socio-political and cultural setttings. Dorina … Continue reading
The University of Sydney, School of Architecture, Design and Planning is hosting on Symposium on Informal Urbanism in the Asia-Pacific region on 25 September 2018. The event will discuss the work of researchers in Australia and overseas in relation to urban informality, bottom-up approaches and the New Urban Agenda. The program is available here. Sonia … Continue reading