Lecture: The formal – informal interface and its relevance for promoting spatial justice

10 March 2021 12:45 till 13:45 - Location: Online - By: Communicatie BK | Add to my calendar

The lunchlecture 'The formal – informal interface and its relevance for promoting spatial justice' with Rudolf Perold is part of the Van Eesteren Fellowship Lecture Series 2021: Towards a grounded, just and unapologetically ethical planning practice.

Informality is still a central challenge to contemporary architecture and urbanism (Perold, 2018, p. 75; Revell, 2010, p. 5). The dichotomy of the formal and the informal is a reductionist epistemological demarcation which is disconnected from the interweaving of the formal and informal in everyday life. There is a need for a critical theoretical position that can understand and address the formal and informal as a continuum, beyond stigmatization and that reveals the complex effects and action of these practices. Perold stresses that we need this redefinition of “in[formal]ity as a dialectic whole to replace the dichotomy of formal vs. Informal” (2018, p. 11), allowing us to better understand the continuous production of urban space through both formal and informal practices, through top-down planning and every day appropriations by different actors (Milgrom, 2008, p. 265; Perold, 2018, p. 80).

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