Concept Of Non-institutional Housing

Abstract

Abstract: The major characteristic of the contemporary urbanized world is informality, particularly urban informality, which is a crucial notion to describe an act or spatial reality that operates outside the institutional laws of a country. The development of housing complexes in urban areas, outside the framework of construction laws, is a global phenomenon, especially prevalent in most countries. These are individual initiatives that grow to form entire neighborhoods, making this phenomenon a global trend. These developments, composed of housing, outdoor spaces, and commercial areas, do not follow institutional rules or top-down funding. They respond to personal needs and desires related to the life of the inhabitant, their family, their integration, and their settlement, often built without construction permits. The terms used to describe these areas in different languages are numerous and can refer to very different realities depending on local urban situations. This phenomenon exists under different names in various countries. The U.N. provides a list that includes: favela (Brazil), morro / cortiço / comunidade (Portugal), villas misérias (Argentina), chabolas (Spain), slum or squatter settlements (English literature), precarious or spontaneous housing, irregular or informal neighborhoods (French literature), bidonvilles of Rabat (Morocco), encampment (Haiti), gecekondu (Turkey), kampung (Indonesia), and the list goes on. This list is not exhaustive, as other names are attributed to these non-institutional sites: self-built housing, insalubrious, non-regulated, popular, dilapidated, illegal, marginalized spaces, gourbivilles, musseque (slums of Luanda – Angola), hámichi (marginal) or ghayr rasmi (unofficial) (Egypt), and the term almanatiq al ghyer mukattata (unplanned zones) used by the General Organization for Physical Planning (GOPP), the body responsible for urban planning. These densely populated clusters of shacks, installed for years with assemblages of tarps, sheets, and poorly consolidated cement walls, are set up in the smallest vacant spaces: wastelands, flood-prone areas, ravines. This category represents informal slums. There are also non-institutional zones built similarly to institutional zones with plots and the use of reinforced concrete structures and construction materials: concrete blocks, hollow bricks, bricks. This category represents permanent informal housing. In each location of non-constitutional housing, the terminology provides insights into living conditions, a relationship to the site, culture, and history.