Penn IUR and Weitzman School Launch Lab on Urban Informality and Sustainable Development

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA—The Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) and University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design (Weitzman School) are pleased to announce the formal launch of the Lab on Urban Informality and Sustainable Urban Development, a project that consolidates and supports efforts throughout the University of Pennsylvania that explore the way informality is shaping sustainable urban development.

Today’s metropolises are expanding rapidly— cities of the Global South are experiencing annual growth rates sometimes exceeding three or four percent—and this growth is coinciding with the proliferation of informality in all aspects of life.

The Lab, led by Penn IUR Co-Director Eugenie Birch and Penn IUR Faculty Fellow Erick Guerra, both faculty of the Weitzman School, aims to generate research and knowledge about informality in all of its many forms. The Lab considers multiple interpretations of informality: a form of marginalization from formal society, a semi-integration into formal society, or a rational form of survival within state-sanctioned institutional arrangements. As such, the Lab looks at the systematic forces that drive informality, and how these forces manifest themselves in various sectors, including housing, employment, transport, energy, and service delivery.

Birch and Guerra have already been working to drive research and projects in this area. Projects already underway or completed include:  several publications including Slums, How Informal Real Estate Markets Work (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) and Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Projects (Island Press, 2017); convenings such as “Why Cities? Informality as a Way of Life: Challenges to Sustainable Urban Development,” an April 2019 roundtable aimed to align current research and initiatives on informality; support of doctoral research; and an April 2019 photo contest on the theme of urban informality.

The new Lab on Urban Informality and Sustainable Urban Development will formally integrate, consolidate and promote the University’s recent and future data collection and research to develop new knowledge in this area.