The study of peri-urbanization attracted attention in the final quarter of the 20th century, due to the pace it acquired worldwide and the implication that urbanization and overall settlement patterns have on social sustainability and development. Th...
Facing increased rural-urban migration, population growth, climate change impacts, and cascading natural, security, and health hazards, many municipalities in sub-Saharan Africa are beginning to consider the benefits of urban green infrastructure for...
There is a need to understand the complex nature of informal settlements to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 11: “Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable”. Thus, addressing the urban governance...
Few studies have investigated the urban morphology of informal settlements at fine-grain level, limiting effective urban planning and policies targeting such areas. This study presents a high-resolution morphological analysis of five informal settlem...
There is still little knowledge about the link between gender mainstreaming and energy security in informal urban settlements and there is limited design support to address this linkage. This paper presents the development and evaluation of the Gende...
Public spaces in informal settlements are often viewed as congested, unregulated, or residual areas, yet they play a central role in everyday urban life. This paper examines how public spaces are socially produced through everyday appropriation, inte...
This perspective paper highlights the potentials, limitations, and combinations of openly available Earth observation (EO) data and big data in the context of environmental research in urban areas. The aim is to build the resilience of informal settl...
Beyond conserving urban heritage, the concept of historic urban landscapes (HULs) aims to tackle poverty and inequality, as well as to improve the quality of human settlements, through a people-centered approach in the context of rapid urbanization....
Disaster risk perception in informal urban settlements remains insufficiently understood despite its importance for climate adaptation and urban resilience policies. This study evaluated disaster risk perception among residents of nine informal settl...
The major challenge facing big cities in developing nations is allocating residential land to the urban poor, given the constraints on land availability. This article investigates how and why the management of Waqf land, a particular type of land ten...
28 July 2026
Young women living in urban informal settlements experience intersecting structural and environmental conditions that shape health and well-being. Alcohol environments (the physical, social, and commercial contexts in which alcohol is sold, marketed...
25 September 2021
The emergence of COVID-19 has profoundly affected mental health, especially among highly vulnerable populations. This study describes mental health issues among caregivers of young children and pregnant women in three urban informal settlements in Ke...
Informal settlements are the most common form of urbanization on the planet, accounting for one-third of the total urban form. It is expected that by the mid twenty-first century, up to three billion people will live in informal urban environments. H...
Sustainable urbanization policies and strategies are posited as a major tool by which to achieve the sustainable development of growing towns and cities. A major challenge for sustainable urbanization policies and strategies is how to address the com...
Enhancing the social dimension of sustainability is essential for improving the livability of informal settlements, yet its evaluation is often constrained by the absence of reliable socio-economic data. This study addresses this challenge by demonst...
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread disruptions to health, economic and social lives globally. This qualitative study explores frontline healthcare workers’ (HCWs) experiences delivering routine care in Kenya’s informal settlement...
The understanding of urban morphology as a means of exploring the materiality of urban areas has been an emerging practice amongst academics, but the reach of the methods in urban-design research has been limited. This research presents the integrati...
Climate projections indicate that persistent high temperatures and related heat stress will become a common experience in the future, across Africa. It is, therefore, important to understand challenges that might result from increasing extreme heat c...
Urban informal settlements (UISs), characterized by self-organized housing, a high population density, inadequate infrastructure, and insecure land tenure, constitute a critical, yet underexplored, aspect of contemporary urbanization. They necessitat...
This study aims to assess the social outcome of place-making in urban informal settlements. This research is guided by the following research question: What are the relationships between regular and temporal place-making towards local capacity, socia...
The number and sizes of informal settlements are expected to increase drastically in the future, and dramatically so in Sub-Saharan Africa, where migration from rural to urban areas is increasing, and poverty and food insecurity threaten livelihoods....
Informal settlements i.e., slums emerge from the interplay of multidimensional factors related to urbanization and sustainability. While the contribution of urban factors is well understood, the role of external drivers, such as uncontrolled migratio...
Rapid urbanization in developing countries has been accompanied by the spread of informal settlements, which is particularly prominent in sub-Saharan Africa. These settlements have become an important supplement to the inadequate formal housing suppl...
Urban informal settlements or slums are among the most vulnerable places to climate-change-related health risks. Yet, little data exist documenting environmental and human health vulnerabilities in slums or how to move research to action. Citizen sci...
30 December 2005
People living in poverty make up nearly half of the global population and a large proportion of these individuals inhabit cities, living in informal settlements. However, only limited research on in-home environmental exposures and the associated hea...
26 September 2019
Informal settlements are becoming more entrenched within African cities as the urban population continues to grow. Characterised by poor housing conditions and inadequate services, informal settlements are associated with an increased risk of disease...
The frequency and severity of extreme weather events have increased due to climate change, with floods emerging as one of the most common climate change-induced disasters the world over. South Africa is one of the countries most susceptible to floods...
This paper engages with how the incremental production of space works in informal settlements. As one of the critical challenges of urbanism in the cities of the global South, informal settlements cannot be simply addressed through ruthless practices...
There have been significant research studies on informal settlements within various disciplines including sociology, economy, politics, governance, and urbanism. However, little is known about the complexity and dynamism of informal settlements. The...
Building sustainable communities is always related to the occupants’ physical and psychological safety, environmental security and human settlements inclusivity, etc. The interfaces of Chinese urban villages have shown features that are irregul...
Rapid urbanization combined with the effects of climate change has increased the vulnerability of poor urban communities to natural hazards, particularly to informal settlements located in coastal areas. Apart from socio-economic challenges, the effe...
Informal urbanism has become a widespread form of urbanisation, particularly in the context of the global South. While there is an emerging body of knowledge focusing on the morphologies of informal settlements, the incremental transformations of eme...
Informal settlement has become one of the critical ways of producing space and accessing affordable housing, particularly in the context of the global South. Much of the established literature on the shaping of public space focuses on cities of the g...
The upgrade paradigm has been a widely accepted solution to informal settlements. However, implementing an effective upgrade program has been challenging for governments of most developing countries. This paper reports a study which examined informal...
Slum/informal settlements are an integral part of a city, with a population projected to reach 3 billion by 2030. It is also expected that the rate of waste generation will more than triple by 2050 in the cities of low-income countries of sub-Saharan...
To manage urban ecological ecosystems adequately, understanding the urban areas’ biophysical characteristics is required. This study developed a settlement surface ecological index (SSEI) using tree, soil, impervious surface and grass covers, l...
Rapid urbanisation in the Global South has accelerated the expansion of informal settlements. This has increased exposure to water-, fire-, and health-related risks and undermined pathways toward sustainable urban development. Although such risks are...
The current dimension of informal settlements in Maputo requires the definition of action models framed by empirical evidence, taking advantage of pre-existing socio-spatial and environmental conditions to define physical interventions through sustai...
In sub-Saharan Africa, the urban majorities are financially excluded from the formal housing markets and reside in informal settlements. Limited knowledge on the development of informal settlements compromises the efficacy of urban planning and polic...
Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia and one of the fastest-expanding cities in Africa, is undergoing rapid urbanization which has led to acute housing scarcity and a growth of informal settlements. The growth of informal settlements seems unsto...
This paper explores the link between the current vision of the “smart city” and the notion of urban autopoiesis understood as self-organized/managed urban systems. It seeks to highlight how the use of GIS analysis, applied to the study of informal se...
This article challenges the narrow definition of informal settlements as solely lacking a formal framework, which overlooks the dynamic city-making and urban design processes within these areas. Communities’ self-building processes and areas&rs...
Informal settlements accommodate more than one billion people worldwide, yet their intricate urban forms are frequently perceived as chaotic, which impedes the formulation of sustainable upgrading strategies. The main objective of this research is to...
Children heading households (CHH) in urban informal settlements face specific vulnerabilities shaped by limitations on their opportunities and capabilities within the context of urban inequities, which affect their wellbeing. We implemented photovoic...
The emergence of high-resolution satellite data, such as WorldView-2, has opened the opportunity for urban land cover mapping at fine resolution. However, it is not straightforward to map detailed urban land cover and to detect urban deprived areas,...
This article examines the role of legal actors in mediating urban land conflicts involving informal settlements and the social and environmental functions of private property. This problem reveals the challenges of conciliating two constitutional rig...
The lack of land ownership databases in developing countries has influenced inhabitants of these countries to occupy public lands. This situation has resulted in areas of informal housing, commerce, and agriculture, ultimately creating new informal s...
Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa is advancing rapidly, raising critical questions about whether metropolitan growth fosters transformation or exacerbates inequality and ecological risk. The Greater Maputo Metropolitan Area exemplifies these tension...
The Zaatari Camp in Jordan exemplifies how Syrian refugees transform a planned grid settlement into an organic urban environment through socio-spatial adaptation, reflecting their cultural identity and territorial practices. This study investigates t...
A mixed-methods approach is used to understand the human factors defining cultural heritage in two informal settlements in Islamabad, Pakistan, namely France Colony and Mehr Abadi. The methodology applied is based on spatial investigation within a pl...
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