Chicago, Informal City

Keywords: informality, city, urban design, critical spatial practices
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 70

Abstract

Beginning in the 1950s, many cities in the Global South began experiencing unprecedented migrations of impoverished people moving from rural areas to the metropolitan periphery. These marginal urban settlements developed spontaneously and lacked planning, infrastructure, and public services. Despite overcrowding and extreme poverty, migrants benefited from greater access to work, education, healthcare, and public transit. At the same time, increasing flows began migrating from the Global South to major metropolitan areas in the Global North, and this trend has continued ever since. Climate change and migration are central challenges of the 21st century. These environmental and socio-economic shifts compel geographers, planners, architects, designers, and stakeholders to better understand migration and its significant impact on urban development. The informal city requires a multidisciplinary approach to spatial production that challenges normative practices in planning, architecture, and design. As such, this research looks beyond sustainability to an urban future in which America’s changing demographics confront intersectional issues of ecological and social justice. Using case studies developed in an architecture and urban design studio supported by field research, this presentation surveys design interventions proposed for Pilsen on the Lower West Side of Chicago. The work collectively employs critical spatial practices that enhance right-to-the-city vis-a-vis activism, cultural representation, and the built environment. Here, inspired by the call to spatial agency by Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till, design interventions act as agents of appropriation, dissemination, empowerment, networking, subversion, and transformation.