Austere conditions with less than the bare necessities to sustain a healthy lifestyle would be considered deplorable to most of Western civilization.  One room surrounded by corrugated metal, no electricity, running water, heating or cooling systems, or even windows is unfathomable to most of the United States.  However these conditions are home to so many across the world who not only live through these conditions, but also raise families and provide for loved ones as well.  Informal cities are frowned upon amongst those who simply don’t understand the current crises facing urban conditions around the world.  With such an increase in population, and no way to regulate a healthy way of life, people begin to take matters into their own hands in order to provide for loved ones.  Is there value is this meager way of life?  Is there an ostensible freedom found in slums and informal cities that most individuals find highly coveted?  Slums always have a negative connotation, however I find a happy contradiction within this lifestyle that emanates through the garbage, and those who dwell within these spaces.  From the readings there seems to be a sense of ownership and pure happiness among those who occupy informal cities.  From a distance, informal cities are ostensibly chaotic, filthy and uninhabitable areas.  Then a closer look may imply organization and a dynamic way of life that supports and maintains this increase in population.  Lagos is a great example of a congested city that contains these chaotic features but simultaneously maintains a sophisticated network of organized systems.  Inherently in Lagos is a dynamic way of living, which comes about through the constant appropriation of spaces by occupants.  Any paved space will be occupied in some way in order to accommodate everyone.  I wonder if there are certain aspects to these informal cities and slums that can b applied to our “perfect cities”, can we learn from Lagos or Mumbai?  Do these areas offer ideas that will inevitably allow the “rethinking” of all cities?  Population growth is an inevitable issue and there doesn’t seem to be a politically correct or humane way of addressing this fact.  The answer may lie within these areas that we look down upon and consider waste lands of poor individuals of which we can never coexist with.  Maybe we can learn from those who have come face to face with a dramatic and life threatening situation that forced them to rethink  their way of life.

1. Lagos: Harvard Project on the City, Rem Koolhaas,

2. Lagos: Harvard Project on the City, Rem Koolhaas,

3. Shadow Cities, Robert Neuwirth, Page xiv