Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemThe Shaping of Kampungs: Understanding incremental production of urban space in Jakarta’s informal settlements( 2023)One out of every three people of the global urban population lives in informal settlements, with the number of populations expected to rise from one billion to three billion people by 2050. Acknowledging this rapid growth means greater focus should be placed on understanding the complexities of informal settlements. This thesis is based on the premise that to engage effectively with informal settlements, we need to understand how the physical fabric of their settlements is produced and continues to be produced. Meanwhile, the morphological study on informal settlements has been neglected, and while growing research on informal settlement globally looks at multiple socio-economic aspects, study on morphogenesis is still considerably limited. This thesis addresses this gap by focusing on how the physical urban fabric of informal settlements is produced and transformed over time. Using Jakarta’s kampungs as a case study, this thesis employed a multi-scalar morphogenesis mapping to gain a deeper understanding of the logic behind the shaping of informal settlements. The findings illustrate that informal morphogenesis varied depending on their connection to urban areas, topography, expansion and contraction patterns, access networks, public open space design, built-form increments and materials. This thesis argues that any one-size-fits-all type of engagement or one way of thinking on demolition or replacement disregards the diverse nature and complexities of informal settlements. Instead of seeing informal settlements as chaotic, disordered and ineffective ways of building cities, planners, designers, and architects should think of them as a way to understand and address social and spatial inequalities.
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ItemHow do informal settlements take shape? Morphogenesis in three Indian cases( 2022)Informal settlements are the primary means of meeting the demand for affordable housing in the global south cities. Yet, the urban design being produced by this now dominant form of production remains invisible in planning documents. We lack a comprehensive understanding of the forms of informality. This thesis identifies the gap in knowledge about settlement growth processes and aims to contribute to the discipline by studying the architecture and urban design of three informal settlements in India. The research adopts a multi-scalar approach that investigates the everyday logics, the particularities of the local context, and the structural processes that play out in the production of these settlements. With a methodological framework based on assemblage thinking, this thesis seeks to understand differences and similarities between settlements along with the agency of material and social actors. This thesis compares peripheral informal settlements from Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, to answer the following key research questions – How do informal settlements take shape? 1. How does the urbanisation process of the city impact the settlement’s morphology? 2. What are the different forms of organisation in the settlement and the politics of form-making? 3. What role does materiality play during the growth processes? The thesis provides a nuanced account of the interrelations between urban morphology, historical context and threats of eviction; it shows that informal settlement is not unplanned but emerges through complex negotiations between the urban poor, land mafias and the state.
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ItemDesiring Karail: Morphogenesis of an informal settlement in Dhaka( 2021)Informal settlements currently house more than a billion people and will house a billion more by 2030. They are pervasive, expanding and persistent. Some of them have slum conditions while others do not. Often described as ‘spontaneous’ or ‘autonomous’, they are produced without the explicit urban design mechanism of the state. The changes in urban form in these places suggest the existence of particular processes of design and production. Understanding such processes underlying the morphogenesis—the development of urban form—is the central inquiry of this research. Moreover, the research aims to articulate the dynamic forces that enable or constrain the production processes. To do so, the thesis investigates Karail, which has emerged as the largest informal settlement in Dhaka over the last 40 years. Spread over an area of about 35 hectares, it is a dense agglomeration with a population of more than 250,000. Even without state planning and maintenance, functioning neighbourhoods with a characteristic urban form has emerged. The question is how. Employing a mixed-method research framework, which included multi-scalar mapping, in-depth observation and oral histories of placemaking, the thesis has interrogated the morphogenesis by tracing morphological change, informal rules used and the agents involved. It analysed the underlying forces—the desires—shaping the urban processes. Assemblage thinking, derived from the work of Deleuze and Guattari has been used to produce narratives of Karail’s informal morphogenesis in terms of the urban form, its uses and the control of the urban production. Beyond the notion of ‘self-organization’, the concluding analysis pointed towards heterogeneous formative processes—a mix of individualised, collectivised and syndicated forms of organization. The concomitant entanglements of power between the State, NGOs, the surrounding formal neighbourhoods and the residents were of different orientations as well, often in alignment and in contradiction with each other. The thesis shows how the urban morphogenesis under investigation in Karail works as a sociospatial assembling held together by different desires, themselves appearing from within a landscape of narratives, capacities and imaginaries. It ends with a speculative impact of the findings on policy-making, upgrading and management of existing informal settlements and the episteme of urban design for future cities.
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ItemResilience versus formalisation in the informal city: case study, the city of Golestan( 2015)This thesis is a study of the formalisation of informal settlements within a framework of resilience thinking with a focus on urban design scales and outcomes. Resilience is a framework for dealing with uncertainty and adaptation in complex developments. The thesis studies the effects of the urban formalizing processes in relation to resilience and adaptation capacities. It traces the transformations imposed by urban upgrading regulations by comparing three neighbourhoods in different phases of formalisation in Golestan, Tehran. Informal settlements have become an important part of urbanity due to rapid urbanization, lack of access to affordable housing, disasters, civil wars and climate change. These settlements have taken shape since the 1960s in Iran. Socio-political events as well the modernization process has exacerbated their formation ever since. This research is an urban design study on the effects of formalisation of informal settlements in Tehran, Iran. It will trace the process of change imposed by upgrading urban regulations and how it has affected their adaptation capacities. Resilience and complex adaptive systems as well as assemblage theories and their related concepts will be used as toolkits to conduct this research. The study will be conducted as a multiple case study inquiry on informal settlements in Tehran conurbation. Three case studies are chosen for this study: Soltanabad, where formalisation pricess is recently initiated, Feshargavi, where fast changes are in progression and New Golestan, which is a formally planned area. Drawing on methodological concepts, different techniques will be applied to collect and analyse qualitative data. Archival research, mapping, observation, and interview as well as document analysis are the main methods will employ in this research. This research will contribute to present new perspectives on effects of formalisation process as an agent of change on resilience of these areas.