Sufficiency in rapidly urbanising regions – Coproduction of neighbourhoods as an alternative strategy for sustainable urban design

Abstract

In order to address the challenges of future architectural education, it is necessary to consider the concept of sufficiency as a part of a wider approach to sustainable urban development. In the global context of climate change, it is essential to include the role of rapidly urbanising regions in the discussion. This offers the opportunity to implement new strategies of sufficiency at a larger scale, with the potential to create long-lasting positive impacts regarding resource consumption and social development.

The number of inhabitants of informal settlements in the global south is expected to increase significantly by 2050. Various experts are demanding the recognition of the informal sector as the predominant form of future urban space production, by anticipating the development of self-built settlements and by incorporating them into formal planning processes.

The concept of coproduced neighbourhoods adopts the above-mentioned approach of anticipation and develops it further into the “Incremental City” strategy, a hybrid urban development model that brings together aspects of top-down planning and bottom-up self-organisation, as well as providing ample space for informal self-building.