Informal Urbanization in Latin America

Reviews / Votes

"If you are a professional architect and urban planner, a scholar or a student of urban planning and design, or if you work in local and city governments, you will find this book extremely useful. It deals with the biggest challenge of city governments in the twenty-first century: informal urbanization and the appearance of slums, informal settlements and settlements where nearly 1 billion people live today. The Coronavirus pandemic exacerbated the problem and showed that we need to change and urgently transform these areas. How to do that? The book provides the reader with real answers and practical examples from Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Medellin on how to transform slums and informal settlements into livable and safe neighborhoods and integrate them into the urban fabric and planning systems of cities. This is not an easy task and the book is rich in testimonies of those directly involved in real actions that transform ideas into reality."

- Claudio Acioly, urban planner, international housing and development expert

"Based on long-term research over four case studies, this book investigates the non-formal sector of urban growth in Latin America. Writing from a landscape-architectural perspective, Werthmann puts the geophysical landscape in focus for his in-depth analysis. With its anticipatory and multi-scalar approach, this book is a highly relevant contribution to the debate about improvement of urban ecologies."

- Andres Lepik, Director of the Architekturmuseum, Technical University of Munich "If you are a professional architect or urban planner, a scholar or a student of urban planning and design, or if you work in local or city governments, you will find this book extremely useful. It deals with the biggest challenge for city governments in the twenty-first century: informal urbanization and the appearance of slums, informal settlements and settlements, where nearly 1 billion people live today. The Coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem and showed that we need to change and urgently transform these areas. How to do that? The book provides the reader with real answers and practical examples from Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Medellin on how to transform slums and informal settlements into livable and safe neighborhoods, integrating them into the urban fabric and planning systems of cities. This is not an easy task and the book is rich in testimonies of those directly involved in real actions that transform ideas into reality."

Claudio Acioly, urban planner, international housing and development expert

"Based on long-term research over four case studies, this book investigates the non-formal sector of urban growth in Latin America. Writing from a landscape-architectural perspective, Werthmann puts the geophysical landscape in focus for his in-depth analysis. With its anticipatory and multi-scalar approach, this book is a highly relevant contribution to the debate about improvement of urban ecologies."

Andres Lepik, Director of the Architekturmuseum, Technical University of Munich

Werthmann's book shows that although informal settlements are often the site where cities are first
and most impacted by rapid climate change, they have been excluded from formal planning processes.
As a result, designers often assume that informal settlements lack plans and order and are not familiar
with the informal plans and order that do exist. Thus, the book would be useful as a supplementary
resource for the disciplines of urban planning, public policy, urban design, and landscape architecture
where designers and policymakers seek to understand the logic of informal environments, and as
a practical sourcebook for helping communities to prepare for uncertain future conditions. [...] In sum, learning about landscape-oriented upgrading through the context of Latin America can help to advance variations in response to urban informality-climate change interactions elsewhere

Kristine Stiphany, Journal of Urban Affairs