Informalizing Public Space: Appropriation, Urban Mapping and Design Thinking

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue engages with how forms of informality work in public space. It focuses on the capacity of urban design to enable or constrain the ways in which different forms of informality emerge and are sustained in public space. The aim is to explore the possibility of harnessing the productive capacities of informality while managing the appropriation of public space to maintain its functionality and openness. This Special Issue lies at the intersection of studies on urban informality and public space. It also cuts across the distinctions between cities of the global South and those of the global North to provide a better understanding of the relations between formal and informal across different case studies and scales.

The key questions are: What is the role of informality in public space? What forms of informality take place in public space? How do different forms of informality work in public space? What is the role of the built environment? How can urban design most effectively address informality in the process of shaping and managing public spaces? What are the synergies and contradictions between formal and informal in public space? What are the in-between conditions? How do forms of informality compete for space and visibility? What methods can be used to unravel the ways in which forms of informality work in public space? What are the adaptations and codes of informality in public space? What are the relations between urban informality and street-life intensity? What are the rhythms of informality in public space? What are the relations between spatial, social, and temporal aspects of informality in public space? In what ways can urban mapping be used to unravel the dynamics of informality in public space? How can urban design interventions enable or constrain the emergence and consolidation of informality in public space? In what ways can urban informality be sustained in public space?

Dr. Hesam Kamalipour
Guest Editor

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• public space
• informality
• street life
• typology
• urban mapping
• urban intensity
• urban morphology
• urban design
• informal urbanism
• appropriation