An evolutionary approach to the informal sector in third world metropolitan areas

Abstract

Urban agglomerations in Third World countries have reached magnitudes of 15–30 million inhabitants of which some 60–70% live in slum and squatter areas. They struggle to survive in the informal sector. Conventional public planning approaches have become inadequate in dealing with this phenomenon; the limits of manageability have been reached. The paper suggests an evolutionary approach stressing flexibility and self-organization. If effective control is out of the question in view of the quantitative dimensions of the problem, it appears to be essential to shift emphasis from conventional styles of town planning to indirect incentive systems focusing on orientation lines and leaving scope for decentralized investment and consumption decisions. Rapidly growing urban agglomerations should be conceived as complex, dynamic and open systems which can no longer effectively be manipulated by way of a linear aim-means approach. The observation of viable systems both in nature and in the social realm reveals that effective behaviour is not steered primarily by singular objectives but rather by general guidelines. One should give up the idea that partial interventions can lead to forecastable optimum results. Instead, strengthening the general problem-solving ability through a suitable general regulatory system should allow for an unhindered evolution of development processes, inter alia through grass-root mobilization, self-help measures, political participation and decentralized decision-making. The slum and squatter populations need scope for individual search processes for survival niches, particularly with regard to housing and sources of income which are frequently interlinked. Traditional welfare-state concepts can no longer be funded. One can only hope to free the “survival territory” of unnecessary restrictions and hindrances. These suggestions arc backed by an empirical case study on five slum areas in Bangkok.