In the field of contemporary town planning, one of the phenomena gaining ground as a symptom of the imbalance in the socio-spatial structure, is the existence of a major division between what is manifested as the dichotomy between the planned and unplanned city. The contrast between those factors that obey certain known rules of organising and ordering activities and the lay- out of buildings and empty spaces, and those elements for which no parameters exist that engender instruments in order to operate with their particular variables. An attempt to deal with the problem of the informal and temporary in the field of town planning, particularly in the context of major contemporary metropolises, necessitates a number of prior considerations.

As we know, the informal is a phenomenon of multiple dimensions and this is why, in order to address it, we have to consider, simultaneously, economic, political, cultural and town-planning aspects as interrelated fields that are intercepted by questions of the contemporary subject. A subject stressed and beset by the influences of consumption, information and contradictory values, revealed through the different logics expressed confusingly in the everyday fight for survival and the right to exist. From our disciplinary point of view, as architects and town planners, we are particularly interested in the vital aspect of the informal. What manifests itself as a vast energy of social interaction, in spite of the visual and functional disorder resulting from successive economic crises, government corruption and a lack of public policies in order to channel events.

In this context, the informal economy refers to the space in which the struggle between the global and local, between what is regulated by the State and what escapes it, is normally expressed. Between the side that excludes people from connecting to the networks of globalised capitalism, and the production of a surplus of “labour” that is not absorbed by increasingly specialised manufacturing activities, concentrated (reduced to minimum operational levels) and increasingly mediated by automation processes. At the same time, the dwindling of the state apparatus and the “tercerization” of some of its functions, contributes, in turn, to the instability of labour links and, as a consequence, to the weakening of social networks. Since the 1980s, there has been an increase in the precariousness of economic and social relations as a whole, with their manifestation in urban space, both in manufacturing and in the service and administrative sectors.
From the 1960s onwards, most of the mega-shanty towns grew up around the world, and the 1980s can be considered the time when the post-industrial era was intercepted by precariousness, triggering hyperconsumption, producing a vast excess of unemployed people who contribute to an uncontrolled increase in the huge patches that make up the peripheries of major metropolises. A dialectic of emptying the traditional centre and its endless spread to the periphery was intensified from then on, constituting a landscape characterised by the visual anomaly as a symbol of identity, which stretches from the periphery to the city centre. Hence, we can characterise globalization processes as those of the excluded poor (excluded from the care of the State) and exclusive wealth (with its separatist manifestation of wealthy ghettos in the poverty “patch”), which have as their corollary, the divided city. Divided between its formal part, controlled by public power, and their contrast, the informal part, the favela, or shanty town, left to its own fate, with its own laws.

However, this informal, precarious and “temporary” part is also the place where vital processes occur, marked by the constant flows of people, goods, information and the changing representations of life. There is in informality a creative essence as a source of permanent exchange between people which, from this point of view, can act as a benchmark for “political therapeutics” for society as a whole, in the sense in which Jacques Derrida used this concept. That is, as a benchmark for a coexistence of difference, even in situations of want, shortage and physical environments of zero quality, which, despite this, reveal an intense dynamic of exchanges, creativity and the shared management of scant resources. In this sense, it serves to sharpen the potential of the imagination in order to use the material and human means, of which life in informality has something very positive, and to sharpen our perception of the uniqueness of each situation in the way it links up the circuit of interconnection and information, revealing potentials.
Life in informality shows a way of life in order to survive, characterised by an attitude that has a great deal to do with humour as a way of facing problems. Ambiguity is, in this sense, a linchpin of informality. It involves a dialectic between order and disorder, and the ability to make things indeterminate, to confuse them. It involves knowing how to dodge things, which is also an essential component of the “criminal elements”. A type of ethical wisdom that makes it possible to combine things, in a universe of the formal-legal, dominated by rigidity, toughness, sharpness and “clear positions”.
Informality involves a soft approach to the things we have to face. It represents, reduces and perpetuates the ability to dribble the laws along the line of a “vocation for cordiality”. In this universe, the street is this sort of “faculty of architecture for criminal elements” which involves “being able to fend for oneself” in order to live, and which comprises a fundamental means of learning.

It is in the street that people are learning a way of life, trying not to “get screwed up” through the coexistence of conflicting things. However, the costs of living in informality are high, as activities and production usually take place in extremely precarious working conditions, at the expense of the health of those who have to carry out their activities every day in the midst of risky environments characterised by pollution, lack of safety and protection, violence, etc. The conditions usually have a great many shortcomings: a lack of hygiene, an unhealthy environment, sound pollution and a lack of privacy, even for the most basic needs. This is why any attempt to intervene in order to redefine these places must be preceded by careful analyses of the interaction between the different factors at stake, aiming not only not to destroy existing micro-equilibria, but to introduce valancies based on the strengthening of the manufacturing potential of each place, seeking out a fine balance between the existing and the new. This is a task that calls for specific means of communication with the inhabitants and precise working methods based on the reading of the structure of each specific place and on “listening to” demands, as a starting point.
Socio-spatial segregation, which has “informality” as one of its consequences, involves a constant social battle in which the State usually intervenes in the name of order and progress, seeking to reconfigure the borders between formal and informal areas, always from the viewpoint of the interests of the economic and political elites with the aim of guaranteeing (an impossible task) social control. This is why projects for social-spatial structuring must be conceived as mediating instruments in this battle, and work in order to achieve a truce in which the discussion of the general interest of the city finds a point of convergence with local situations, responding to the most pressing emergencies in each specific case.

This is why these are highly complex tasks where technological, economic, political and ethical factors converge as an indissoluble part of their make-up. These projects for the restructuring and recomposition of centralities call for an interdisciplinary approach and coordination between the different federal-public, state and municipal authorities, which is the reason why they can only be implemented as part of a process calling for the participation of local intelligence (the knowledge of the people inhabiting the places) in a dialogue with the disciplinary knowledge coordinated by experienced professionals. This is why the analysis of the structure of each place, by maintaining a dialogue with the inhabitants, forms the basis for making decisions involving careful consideration of the connection between the productive territory and social capital and detecting potentials, intercut with geographical, biological and environmental factors, seeking to resubjectivize the place. Analysis and listening must done with extreme sensitivity to existing conditions, when handling the assessment of the cost-profit ratio.
It is a case of ever- unstable equilibria, of situations in a permanent process of reconfiguration, and this is why approaches to, and concepts of interventions always require a previous “mental ecology”. Namely, a review of the notions that form the basis of an approach to problems, such as concepts of “development”, “modernisation” and “global market”. They are all weighted with ideological connotations which thus require a detailed critical analysis. This means that we don’t need something new but rather to add value to the existing, to transform it by strengthening it; to rearticulate centralities by reconfiguring material and immaterial connectivities.

The informal economy and the “temporary” or “ephemeral implantations” that concern it, are always debated on the uncertain borders between the “legal” and the “illicit”, and in order to fight them they require a specific focalisation on the fragilities inscribed onto the manoeuvres of everyday life. It is on the hazy borders between work, the precarious presence of public power, survival strategies and activities on the boundary between the licit and criminal, that we can try to understand something about the practices for configuring contemporary urban space, in its dynamic between flows and places, which can offer elements in order to help in the praxis of the collective subjects geared towards repositioning the periphery in the context of the city. The point of view adopted for these reflections resulting from years of drawing up projects of socio-spatial structuring, has as its aim to bring together elements in order to approach this subject, which is always “in progress”, made up of “partial syntheses”. The informal economy is not the only thing to produce temporary spaces in those matters specifically concerning urban space. We can distinguish three types of spatial formations which have an informal connotation, two of them are produced within “legal” frameworks and one of them isn’t, but they all lead to “informal” occupations of public or private spaces that are in dispute.

The first type is produced “spontaneously” by forms of social behaviour that appropriate public spaces “in an informal way”, that is, by occupying the pavements, the street and even squares, parks, lakesides and the seashore, with commercial, sporting and recreational activities. Examples of this are the downtown areas of Rio de Janeiro known as the “baixos” (Baixo Leblon, Baixo Gavea, Baixo Ipanema, etc.), where mostly middle-class youths “create” open-air meeting places, which, over a period of time, shift from one area of the city to another. The choice of place complies with factors of accessibility, the concentration of the range of similar activities, a certain bohemian air, status, etc. These places don’t function as a “market” per se, but are meeting and recreational places. Generally speaking they do not comply with the position of the municipal authorities; on the contrary, they have to be modified or adapted depending on the phenomenon, and usually have the support of the population. These points in the city create venues “of movement”, places where the city is very “lively”. The activities that establish themselves there are boosted, when they already exist (despite causing friction with the regulations in force), or are “tolerated” and even encouraged by the authorities. In Buenos Aires, an example is the district of San Telmo, where the entire street, with its central square, is occupied by tables from the bars around its perimeter, sharing space with craftspeople and where impromptu stages are set up for music and dance performances. In the main shopping street in the centre of Montevideo, there is a section of the street and a square the people use for tango dancing, and a space including booths, cafés and bars hosting impromptu artistic and cultural activities.

The second informal type of public or collective space has a clear “market” connotation (in the sense of the city understood as a bazaar) where the legal and illegal, or illicit, come together, characterised by precarious labour, temporary employment and even activities that are sometimes criminal. As a rule these are activities associated with badly paid jobs that offer no social protection and are linked to the economic globalisation characterised by financial liberalisation, the opening up of markets and the reduction of State controls.
One of the results of this form of occupation of public spaces are the “camelódromos” in Brazil, or the public markets in Mexico. Similar in sound to the “sambódromo”, the camelódromo consists of a large area of “kiosks” and “stalls” selling all kinds of merchandise ranging from the legal to the contraband and offering scant amenities. You can literally find “everything” in these truly “transitory-permanent” spaces which are granted permission by the authorities, but where the working conditions of the traders, and the uncomfortable conditions for the public, turn them into manifestations of highly precarious public environments. The physical working conditions and movement around the site are usually extremely negative in terms of “conditions of hygiene” as well as “environmental comfort”. These are climatically uncomfortable environments which constitute visual, sound and environmental pollutants.

The impromptu shopping centres that have sprung up within the shanty towns themselves are the third way of shaping the informal space. Of course these are not just simple shanty towns or favelas. They are “conurbated” shanty complexes forming a constellation with different levels of centrality and containing wide internal socio-economic differentiation. These types of place comprise powerful centres of attraction for all kinds of workers and service providers, including those from the outside. In the shanty town of La Rocinha, in Rio de Janeiro, which has a population of some 100,000 inhabitants and buildings up to 13 storeys high constructed beyond the control of the authorities, there is a floating population of 6,000 providers of the most varied type of services (lawyers, dentists, teachers, priests, customs officers, the managers of chains like McDonald’s and Bob’s, businessmen, traders, cable-TV bosses, artists, ONG workers, the representatives of the authorities, etc.) who go there to work every day of the week, in a clear demonstration of the power of attraction that this “formal economy” can achieve. It is informal in its legal aspects, but has a true presence and power in the city. This type of informal economy includes unregistered ownership of buildings, where several types of irregularities are superimposed, with a lack of fiscal control on activities by the authorities. It also includes the occupation of land whose ownership is unclear and the existence of streets that end abruptly, filled with rubbish.

Here, informality spans the provision of water, electricity, phone lines and street lighting, in a totally precarious way. And the representatives of public-service providers and local inhabitants permanently “negotiate” the “extension” of these services, individually or as a group, connecting high-tech circuits (state-of-the-art cellphones and TV cables, for instance) with the precarious conditions of the shanty town. People trade with the price and cost of these services, the layout of the networks, the houses to be served and the length of the clandestine network with its ramifications. A practical intelligence is at stake in these manoeuvres, which combines the sense of opportunity with the art of confronting complex situations. These negotiations involve being able to deal with the “forces of order” (fiscal or police) who try to reap benefits through blackmail or extortion. This jeopardises a kind of popular solidarity of self-protection, including families experiencing difficulties, community leaders, local traffickers, traders and owners of internal public transport (combi vans, taxis, taxi-bikes), which characterise this permanent state of emergency. This, in turn, determines a situation of permanent unstable equilibrium as a way of structuring the local dynamic, between an entire series of participants, both formal and informal.

This situation of widespread informality calls for the permanent regulation of local businesses and the management of a variety of illegal situations, together with the administration of the most pressing emergencies. Faced with these situations, the authorities usually act in a two-faced manner: with a punitive attitude to placate the middle-class electorate and the economic and political elite, and another attitude that seeks to show their “sensitive” side with regard to economic and cultural exclusion, through more efficient public spending.
In the cases presented in this publication we can verify how, on every scale, each manifestation of exclusion entails a type of spatial precariousness and a condition of insecurity in terms of life. As far as contemporary metropolises and their urban evolution are concerned, we need to rethink town planning in terms of its function as a linking element of the place, social fabric and living conditions, providing options for generating new meanings in the prospects for urbanity and public space, forcing what exists towards desirable potential alternatives, as the direction for an ethical transformation of the environment where people live. And in this sense, the examples presented in this book help us imagine ways of achieving this necessary transformation of the environment where people live into inclusive town planning. The question they pose us is how – based on the peculiarities that speak of the unplanned, the anecdotal, the ordinary, the incomplete, the “quality-free” – any type of identification is possible, no matter how relative, which can trigger new meanings. Allowing us, for instance, to plan spaces that are able to live on top of one another, and to evolve.