Cities are organisms with the ability to grow, shrink, thrive, and self-organize.  They are constantly adapting to new situations, and with the ever growing urban population that we now face, they have countless changes to contend with.  As a result of this intense urban growth, cities cannot be seen as being physically static, be it a formal or informal settlement.  Rather, we must think of them in terms of emergence, which “requires the recognition of buildings not as singular and fixed bodies, but as complex energy and material systems that have a life span, and exist as part of the environment of other buildings, and as an iteration of a long series that proceeds by evolutionary development towards and intelligent ecosystem” (Emergence in Architecture, 1).  In this way, every portion of cities, not simply its inhabitants, makes up part of the dynamic city.

Not only are cities dynamic and ever adapting, but they are also made up of patterns and groupings that are self-organizing.  To many people, slums are simply disordered, chaotic, dense clusters of makeshift buildings.  If this were true, then squatters would never have any clue where they were or how to find anyone within their own community.  Of course this is not true, and squatter settlements work in a similar way to many growing urban environments throughout the world.  They are grouped much the way that Florentine silk weavers are discussed in The Pattern Match; they gravitate towards like-minded people.  Within slums, there are clusters of people from similar cultural backgrounds, religions, professions, etc. all living in a single area.  In this way, slum dwellers create a similar process to what is described in Nonorganic Life where “form emerges out of formless matter, order emerges out of chaos.”  What may appear formless and chaotic at first is in reality a highly organized network of people and groups that create a functioning whole.

The concept that cities “are more an imprint of collective behavior than the work of master planners” validates the organization and creation of squatter settlements. They grow organically, with few, if any formal interventions from governing bodies, and while this may not always be the most functional as far as infrastructure goes, it creates culturally rich, often well functioning communities (The Pattern Match, 109).

Many slums have been in the same location for decades, if not longer.  This suggests that even if the structures they inhabit are not permanent, and the world around them is constantly changing, they have a specific trait that makes them stay put.  It is “a kind of self-organizing stickiness” that allows the squatters to remain in their neighborhoods for decades (The Pattern Match, 106).  This is an astounding feat when compared to many of their counterparts living in the formal cities of the world.  Often city dwellers are constantly on the move, finding a new home every few years, never taking the time to settle in, or even meet their neighbors.  There is certainly quite a bit to be learned from communities of squatters.