Informal Network

A urban strategy for embracing difference and otherness in Bogota

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Abstract

Informal actors possess a practical knowledge of the city, a sort of ‘secret know-how’, of how to move and operate in an environment that is unwelcoming to them. How could this knowledge be used as a tool or input of urban design? By considering the knowledge and ways of operating of the informal actors in a city, the following research has moved away from the ‘designing for’ informality, and more towards ‘designing through’ informality. Incorporating the elements that have been observed in the interaction between informal actors and city infrastructure into the finished, non-prescriptive and multi-functional city interventions. Non-prescriptive, here, means spaces that are sensitive to the movement and way of living of its users. By incorporating that knowledge, this proposal hopes to create spaces of increased number of opportunities and affordances, and as such, to give voice to the informal, marginalized actors in the city, that are often dismissed and excluded.