Rethinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America

Felipe Hernández · Peter Kellett · Lea Knudsen Allen

Dec 2009 · Remapping Cultural History Book 11 · Berghahn Books

About this ebook

Latin American cities have always been characterized by a strong tension between what is vaguely described as their formal and informal dimensions. However, the terms formal and informal refer not only to the physical aspect of cities but also to their entire socio-political fabric. Informal cities and settlements exceed the structures of order, control and homogeneity that one expects to find in a formal city; therefore the contributors to this volume - from such disciplines as architecture, urban planning, anthropology, urban design, cultural and urban studies and sociology - focus on alternative methods of analysis in order to study the phenomenon of urban informality. This book provides a thorough review of the work that is currently being carried out by scholars, practitioners and governmental institutions, in and outside Latin America, on the question of informal cities.

About the author

Felipe Hernández is an Architect and lecturer in architectural design, history and theory at the University of Cambridge. He has an MA in Architecture and Critical Theory and received his PhD from the University of Nottingham. He taught previously in the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool, and has also taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), the Universities of Nottingham, East London and Nottingham Trent. Felipe Hernández has published extensively on contemporary Latin American cities, focusing on the multiplicity of architectural practices that operate simultaneously in the constant re-shaping of the continent’s cities. He is the author of Beyond Modernist Masters: Contemporary Architecture in Latin America (Birkhäuser 2009) and Bhabha for Architects (Routledge 2009) and co-editor of Transculturation: Cities, Space and Architecture in Latin America (Rodopi 2005).