Improvised Urbanism

Improvised Urbanism examines how cities are shaped by adaptive, informal, and incremental spatial practices, moving beyond conventional binaries like formal/informal and planned/unplanned. The book highlights improvised urbanism as a critical framework for understanding how communities navigate uncertainty, inequality, displacement, and environmental change. The book explores how inhabitants transform space through acts of occupation, repair, participation, resistance, and care. Case studies span diverse contexts, including refugee camps, informal settlements, street markets, Indigenous territories, and peri-urban landscapes, revealing resilient and socially embedded forms of urbanism that challenge dominant planning paradigms. Engaging with themes like resilience, tactical urbanism, climate adaptation, and spatial justice, the chapters investigate the structural conditions driving improvisation while foregrounding collective agency and creative capacities. Advocating for reflexive and participatory approaches to urban planning, Improvised Urbanism reimagines planning as an adaptive, inclusive process responsive to the complexities of lived urban realities. Drawing on perspectives from architecture, anthropology, urban design, and political science, this book will be of interest to researchers, students and professionals.