When?  5 OCTOBER 2016 9h45 at Bouwkunde, room F

What? A lecture and workshop on theory of urban development and informal urbanization in the Global South.

Who? Roberto Rocco (see BIO below)

This lecture explores the intimate ties between economic system and the production of urban space in order to critically discuss urbanization processes in the Global South.

The main point made concerns the exclusion of large amounts of citizens from formal modes of production of the city. Urban informality is often mistaken for “freedom to build whatever one wants”, when in reality it  us the spatial expression of exclusion.

Those excluded from formal modes of production of urban space must make appeal to informal modes of spatial production.  This has consequences for their standing as citizens, their ‘right to the city’ and for the sustainability of urban environments.

This lecture was previously given at LANDac (Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development)  Annual International Conference in Utrecht (30 June-1 July 2016) and it was one of the inaugural lectures for the course
of Human Geography – International Development Studies at the University of Utrecht (September 9, 2016)

Mini-bio: Roberto Rocco is an architect and spatial planner who graduated at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, has a Master in Spatial Planning by the same University and a PhD by TU Delft.  He is currently Assistant Professor at the group of Spatial Planning and Strategy of the TU Delft. His main research interests are the governance of water and energy resources at the regional and metropolitan levels and the governance and planning tools to tackle informal urbanisation in the Global South. He also leads the Netherlands Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (NALACS) and the Salzburg Congress on Urban Planning and Development (SCUPAD).