- AFRICA. FROM SHOULD TO COULD New model of planning practice required addressing the increase in migrations. How to integrate informal mechanisms into the urban management of the African culture. (The uncontrolled independence of Peter Pan’s shadow)   1179 kb by    Contin, Antonella & Castano Ortiz, Pedro & Della Rosa, Massimo | antonella.contin@polimi.it    Short Outline The abstract will present a point of view on the complementarity between formality and informality, showing the importance of informality as a source of resilience and adaptability. Dar es Salaam and Cairo Ard al-Liwa New Centrality, Ado Ekiti case studies. Abstract The beginning of the 21st C. is experiencing the phenomena of rapid growth of large urban areas: the metropolitan areas. Growth is uneven between developed economies and emerging economies or transforming ones. The Challenge is to address the emerging economies where growth is at the range of annual 5%, which reflects in a two-fold urban structure every 15 years. The urbanization process is speeding up around the world. Since 2010 more than half of the population of the planet have been living in cities. In the next 20 years the urban population will be expected to grow by 2.000 million inhabitants. Cities are already reacting to these phenomena, but they have to be able to receive and house such large numbers and address related new needs, limiting as much possible dramatic issues. Moreover, the city is the place, in which are taken about the whole territory, not only the built or the [quotright]buildable[quotrightB?]�, but also about the agricultural and natural ones. So it[simplequote]s becoming urgent to recognise the relationships and the reciprocal services between city and ecosystems and to identify suitable tools of communication throw the citizens, stakeholders and city managers. The problem is part of the so-called [quotright]global dimension[quotrightB?]�. The Metropolitan management must to deal with economics, social needs and physical aspects. There is a constant struggle to equilibrate social policies and economic policies. Facing the historical structural transformation of the type of settlements, we should provide some direction about methodology and scale able to guide and determine the development and management of the [quotright]Metropolitan Net- City[quotrightB?]�. We formulate integrated and progressive approaches and provide strategic methods for a developing model, which leads to an intervention and then to a specific local form of Metropolitan City. It is not only a model of a general plan that we need. Therefore, it is a cultural leap to a new identity, which must represent, through its regulatory structures, forms and territorial vocations within common strategies and rules. The focus of our research is the new regional scale of the city, and in particular the coherence between a formal settlement and the illegal one. The Illegality transforms the territory in a losing system by exploiting; it becomes an alien straight and profitable organization onto the territory system. The climate change increases the fragile situation. The dialogue between the formal and the informal is difficult as they employ incompatible procedures and mechanisms. There is need however to try to work out a ground of understanding and collaboration to foster the potential of both. The challenge is not only to add benefits but also to achieve a multiplier effect on the complementarity of both, using each of them for what they can be more performing in the African context. Achieving synergies and multiplier effects can be the outcome that will benefit the city, the metropolis, the region, or the country. The dialogue between the formal and informal in the spatial-physical realm cannot dismiss the informal economy as a causality factor of the urban processes: the informal urban sector. Without denying or forgetting the final objective of formality, where all the rights and duties towards society and the individual are supposed to be cared for, the informal sector provides, at least, a minimum access to services for those that can not access the provision of the formal sector. Informality can be seen as an imperfect intermediary stage that should not be interpreted as the enemy of formality, but as a stepping-stone to the more desirable stages of formality. In this view informality can and/or should be fostered, with the necessary controls in mind, instead of denied or persecuted. The objective is then the need to establish the harnessing processes to avoid flagrant breach of human rights and social duties informality could hide, and to establish the procedure to allow for an incremental path to formalization in an undetermined time horizon. The approach is not any more to prosecute and illegitimatize informality. It is a real change of paradigm. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper