(In)formal

The discussion we had the other day about formal vs informal reminded me of this video of an indian crossroads. As I have never been there, I cannot say if this is how it usually works in India, but it looks pretty informal to me :)

One thing I would like to discuss further with the group is the fact that it seems that slums all over the world are very similar, with some small local variations. Within the formal planning of cities there is a lot more variations (although the grid has proven very effective and is widely used). I would like to investigate what the rules are that make the slums so similar. Could this be programmed easily? Are there any studies about this?

I also read an interesting interview with Mike Davis, done shortly after the publication of Planet of Slums by BLDGBLOG. Check it out, it's worth reading. One quote particularily got my attention:
"I think the slum is universally recognized by military planners today as a challenge. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s a great leap forward in our understanding of what’s happening on the peripheries of Third World cities because of the needs of Pentagon strategists and local military planners. For instance, Andean anthropology made a big leap forward in the 1960s and early 1970s when Che Guevara and his guerilla fighters became a problem.
I think there’s a consensus, both on the left and the right, that it’s the slum peripheries of poor Third World cities that have become a decisive geopolitical space. That space is now a military challenge – as much as it is an epistemological challenge, both for sociologists and for military planners."

Here's another quote about the slums being part of the same problem as the american suburbs, in terms of urbanization:
"The real challenge is to make cities better as cities. I think Planet of Slums addresses the reality that every complaint made by sociologists in the 1950s and 60s about American suburbia is now true on an exponentially increased scale with poor cities: all the problems with sprawl, all the problems with an increasing amount of time and resources tied up in commutes to work, all the problems with environmental pollution, all the problems with the lack of traditional urban apparatuses of leisure, recreation, social services and so on."