CITY DEBATES 2013RETHINKING INFORMALITY: DESIGN TACTICS / PLANNING STRATEGIESARCHITECTURE LECTURE HALLDEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGNAPRIL 22-24

THE MASTERS IN URBAN PLANNING AND POLICY & MASTERS IN URBAN DESIGN DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN AT THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT

The Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES)The Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR)

DAY 1: MONDAY APRIL 22ND

6:00-6:30 OPENING / INTRODUCTION

Makram Suidan, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, AUBMona Fawaz, Associate Professor and Coordinator, MUPP/MUD, AUB

6:30-8:30 KEYNOTE: NEEMA KUDVA, CORNELL UNIVERSITYCritical Interventions: Advancing Equity in the Informal City

8:30 CONFERENCE, OPENING DINNER FORPARTICIPANTS

DAY 2: TUESDAY APRIL 23RD

9:30-11:00 MAKING HOMES ELSEWHERE

Ismael Sheikh Hassan (Architect, Urbanist and Activist, KULeuven) Urbanism and Palestinian Camps: situating an elusive subject Nishat Awan (University of Sheffield), Mapping the informal territories of diasporic space in London Sylvain Perdigon (AUB) Where and when does in-formality begin? Notes on the scales and materials of private worlds in the Palestinian camps of Tyre

Discussant: Munira Khayyat, AUB

11:00-11:30 COFFEE BREAK

11:30-1:30 STATE INTERVENTIONS: BETWEEN DISCIPLINING AND UPGRADING

Razan Abdulwahab (Municipality of Aleppo/ Independent Consultant), Typology and development strategy for Informal Settlements in AleppoSari Hanafi (AUB), Enclaves and Fortressed Archipelago: Violence and Governance in Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugee CampsKhaled Abdelhalim (American University of Cairo), Tools for Participatory Upgrading of Informal Areas: the Egyptian ExperienceLucas Oesch (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva), Managing informality and temporariness in Amman: The upgrading of informal settlements and Palestinian refugee camps

Discussant: Omar Abdul Aziz Hallaj, AUB / Independant Consultant

1:00-2:30 LUNCH BREAK

2:30-4:00 RETHINKING DESIGN TOOLS ANDINTERVENTIONS 1

Philipp Misselwitz (Technical University of Berlin), Open Source Urbanism Temporary Use and other DIY Approaches to Producing Place and Cities.Natalia Silva (Juligon, UCL, DPU), Architects in Practice: The Juligon Experience (Columbia), (TBC)Monika Halkort (Independent Researcher), Expressive Sovereignty. A case study on the political economy of data in the reconstruction of a Palestinian refugee camp.

Discussant: Marwan Zouein, AUB

4 :00-6 :00 MARWAN GHANDOUR (AUB/Iowa StateUniversity)

Building Informal: Design Strategies for Ein elHilweh (Saida/ Lebanon) Adjancent Areas

Exhibition and Discussion with Students involved in the design studio.

DAY 3: WEDNESDAY APRIL 24TH

9:30-11:00 RETHINKING THE FORMAL/INFORMAL DIVIDE

Yasar A. Adanalı (Development specialist and researcher, Stuttgart University), Moving Beyond the Dichotomy: Urban (In)formality in Istanbul Omar Nagati (Architect/Urban Planner, Berkeley), Informality RevisitedKamel Doraï (CNRS, MIGRINTER, University of Poitiers), Forced migrants and urban change in the Middle East: Forms of settlement, informality and urban practices

Discussant: Marwan Ghandour, AUB / Iowa State University

11:00-11:30 COFFEE BREAK

11:30-1:30 RESISTING STATE STRATEGIESMAKING HOME ELSEWHERE

Gerardo Sandoval (University of Oregon), Informal Transnational Migrant Networks and the Creation of Shadow Places/Homes Agnès Deboulet (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis), Insecure Neighborhoods : How Globalization Engenders InformalityDawn Chatty (University of Oxford), Informal Settlements, Statelessness and Tribal Identity on Lebanon's Eastern BordersJana Nakhal (MUPP/MUD, AUB), Mapping practices for better living the informality

Discussant: TBC

2:30-4:00 RETHINKING DESIGN TOOLS AND INTERVENTIONS 2

Sandi Hilal (UNRWA, visiting Al-Quds / Bard College Palestine), The roofless house in Fawwar Refugee camp Peter Kellett (Newcastle University / Addis Ababa University), Inside the Informal City: ethnographic research and everyday housing practicesCamillo Boano (DPU, UCL) Not-to-Design and the challenge of informalities: defending architecture?

Discussant: Karim Najjar (AUB)

4:00-5:00 WRAP-UP, CLOSING PANEL

Mona Harb, MUPP/MUD, AUBRobert Saliba, MUPP/MUD, AUBOmar Abdul Aziz Hallaj, AUB / Independent Consultant

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Khaled Abdelhalim graduated as an architect/planners from Cairo University in 1990, received M.A. in Architecture, Housing Studies from the University of Newcastle, UK in 1995, and Ph.D. in housing policy, planning and practice from the University of Central England in Birmingham, UK in 2003. Abdelhalim worked more than six years for German International Cooperation (GIZ-Egypt) in participatory upgrading of informal areas and has also been a consultant to UN Habitat for strategic planning of governorates and districts in Egypt and contributed to Habitat regional reports. He is also a lecturer at the Department of Architecture at Helwan University, and currently on leave as a visiting assistant professor of urban policy at the Amercian University of Cairo. Abdelhalim has been the executive director of the Local Development Observatory at the Local Administration Reform Unit, a UNDP program supporting the Ministry of Local Development advising on measuring good governance and local development. He is also a founding member of two NGOs: the Egyptian Earth Construction Association and TAKAMOL Foundation for Integrated Development.

Razan Abdulwahab is a practicing architect with extensive experience in urban rehabilitation and informal settlement upgrading. Abdulwahab has been particularly involved in the rehabilitation of the old city of Aleppo where she has worked both in public agencies (Directorate of Tourism) and with international organizations (German international organization for technical cooperation (GIZ), the German bank for cooperation (KFW), UNRWA). Recently, she has worked as assistant manager on Informal Settlements in Aleppo for the GIZ- UDP (UDP is the Project of Urban Development, within the Syrian German cooperation Agreement). Abdulwahab holds in B-Arch in Architecture from the University of Aleppo (‘1990) and a diploma in History and Architectural Theory (Aleppo University, 2002).

Yasar A. Adanalı is a development specialist and researcher based in Istanbul. He is a PhD candidate at the Department of International Urbanism, Stuttgart University. His research focuses on the issues of democracy and the city, urban governance and urban transformation. Apart from Istanbul, he has been working in the cities of South America, Africa and the Middle East. He has two urban blogs, Mutlukent (Happy City) and Reclaim Istanbul. He received an Urban Planning Journalism Award from the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners in 2011. Nishat Awan is a writer and spatial practitioner whose research interests include the production and representation of migratory spaces, inquiries into the topological as method and alternative modes of architectural practice. She holds a PhD in Arcihitecture, is co-author of, Spatial Agency (Routledge, 2011) and co-editor of Trans-Local-Act (aaa-peprav, 2011). She is a member of the art/architecture collective OPENkhana and is currently a Lecturer in Architecture at University of Sheffield.

Camillo Boano is an architect, urbanist and educator. He has a Masters in Urban Development and a PhD in Planning from Oxford Brookes University. At the present is Senior Lecturer at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL, where he directs the MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development. He is one of the Co-Directors of the UCL Urban Lab and coordinates the dpu summerLab at the DPU. Camillo has over 18 years of experiences in research, consultancies and development work in South America, Middle East, Eastern Europe and South East Asia. He combines interests in critical architecture, spatial production, transformations, urbanism with the exceptional circumstances of disasters and informality. His research interests are focused on urban development, design and urban transformations, shelter and housing interventions, reconstruction in conflicted areas and divided cities, and on the contested urbanism. He worked and undertook researches and consultancies in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Venezuela, Salvador, Occupied Territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Bosnia Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia. He is also associate lecturer in the department of Planning, Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, and visiting lecturer at University of Bologna and Polytechnic of Turin and Milan (Italy) as well as in Creteil Val de Marne (Paris) and ETH (Zurich). He authored different publications in academic journals as The Journal of Architecture, Disasters, The Journal of Developing Societies, Trans 22 among others and edited a book on humanitarian urbanism and refugee camps tiled Citta Nude. Iconografia dei campi profughi (Franco Angeli, 2005, in italian). More recently he edited a book with his colleagues Caroline Newton and William Hunter, titled Contested Urbanism in Dharavi. Writings and projects for the resilient city (2013) and is about to finish a book on Giorgio Agamben and Architecture (forthcoming).T

Dawn Chatty is a social anthropologist whose ethnographic interests lie in the Middle East, particularly with nomadic pastoral tribes and refugee young people. Her research interests include a number of forced migration and development issues such as conservation-induced displacement, tribal resettlement, modern technology and social change, gender and development and the impact of prolonged conflict on refugee young people. Chatty is both an academic anthropologist and a practitioner, having carefully developed her career in universities in the United States, Lebanon, Syria and Oman, as well as with a number of development agencies such as the UNDP, UNICEF, FAO and IFAD. She is the author or numerous publications addressing these topics, including a recent volume titled Dispossession and Displacement in the Modern Middle East, London: Cambridge University Press, May 2010.

Agnès Deboulet is sociologist and planner. She is professor at Université Paris 8 and researcher at the Centre de Recherches sur l’Habitat, Lavue (CNRS). Her research interests have focused mainly on popular urbanization and migration in Cairo and Beirut. In France, she is involved in several research initiatives addressing urban renewal in popular neighborhoods and urban citizenship. Deboulet has published numerous articles on these issues. She has also edited several books, including Les Compétences des Citadins dans le Monde Arabe, Paris, Karthala, 2000 (with I. Berry-Chikhaoui); Dynamiques de la Pauvreté en Afrique du Nord et au Moyen-Orient, Paris, Karthala, 2004 (with B. Destremau and F. Ireton); Villes Internationales, Entre Tensions et Réactions des Habitants, Paris, La Découverte, 2007 (with I. Berry-Chikhaoui and L. Roulleau Berger), Le parcours Engagé de F. Navez-Bouchanine, Mondes Urbains, Paris, Karthala, 2013 (with M. Jolé), and has recently edited the book coordinated by the late F. Navez-Bouchanine, Effets sociaux des politiques urbaines, Paris, Karthala, 2012.

Kamel Doraï is a researcher at the CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) currently based at MIGRINTER, University of Poitiers (France). He was based at the IFPO (French Institute for the Near East) in Damascus, Syria from 2006 to 2010. His work focuses mainly on asylum and refugees in the Middle East, new migrations and geopolitical reorganisation in the Middle East, and migration and transnational practices of refugees originating from the Middle East. Doraï is currently conducting research on Iraqis in Lebanon and Sweden as well as on the urbanization process of refugee camps in Lebanon. He has conducted fieldwork in Lebanon, Syria and Sweden since 1996 on different refugee groups, collecting biographies, migration trajectories, and urban mobility. The comparative study between refugees residing in and out of camps as well as the analysis of their migratory experience and spatial practices provide an account of the refugees' socio-spatial dynamics in exile and of relations between the camp and their urban environment.

Marwan Ghandour is a Professor of Architecture and AssociateDean for Academic Programs of the College of Design at Iowa State University. He teaches studios in architectural and urban design, multi-disciplinary theory seminars and oversees thesis work in rural and urban studies. Ghandour is a partner in the Beirut-based architectural firm Bawader Architects, with a practice in institutional architecture and urban design projects in Lebanon. His research and practice include collaborations with landscape architects, planners, graphic designers and transportation engineers. His work have been focused on two regions, the Middle East and the American Midwest, where he conducts theoretical and historicalresearch and develops urban regeneration proposals.

Monika Halkort received her PHD in sociology as part of the conflict in cities research framework conducted by the Universities of Cambridge, Exeter and Queens in the UK. Her work focuses on the social life of information, technology and media systems and traverses the fields of urban sociology, media studies, political geography, cybernetics and media archaeology. She is currently working on a project entitled ‘Expressive Sovereignties’ in which she examines the geopolitics of copyright in humanitarian and developmental organisations. The study demonstrates how closed data architectures undermine struggles for political autonomy and self-determination among stateless populations, refugees and other disenfranchised groups. The research is not limited to a mere theoretical discussion but develops practical tools and models based on best practice examples to equip those, who depend on humanitarian aid to make effective use of information in defending their interests as political subjects and collectivities. Monika is a well-received lecturer on the social, political and cultural impact of information technology and social media. Prior to her career in academia she has worked as new media developer and broadcast journalist in Austria, Germany and San Francisco, USA.

Sari Hanafi is Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut and editor of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology (Arabic). He is also a member of the Executive Bureau of the International Association of Sociology and the Arab Sociological Association. He holds a Ph. D. in Sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales-Paris, where he wrote his thesis entitled "Les ingénieurs en Syrie. Modernisation, technobureaucratie et identité," (1994). He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Poitiers and Migrintern (France), University of Bologna and Ravenna (Italy) and visiting fellow in CMI (Bergen-Norway). Hanafi was also the former Director of the Palestinian Refugee and Diaspora Centre (Shaml) from 2000-2004 and a former senior research at the Cairo-based French research center, Centre d'études et de documentation économique juridique et sociale (CEDEJ) from 1994-2000. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on the political and economic sociology of the Palestinian diaspora and refugees; sociology of migration; transnationalism; politics of scientific research; civil society and elite formation and transitional justice. Among his recent books are: The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in The Occupied Palestinian Territories (Edited with A. Ophir & M. Givoni, 2009) (English and Arabic) (NewYork: Zone Book; Beirut: CAUS), The Emergence of a Palestinian Globalized Elite: Donors, International Organizations and Local NGOs (Edited with L. Taber, 2005) (Arabic and English) and Pouvoir et Associations dans le Monde Arabe (Edited with S. Bennéfissa, 2002) (Paris: CNRS).

Sandi Hilal is an architect based in Bethlehem. She is consultant with the UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) on the camp improvement program and visiting professor at Al-Quds/ Bard College Palestine. She is a founding member of DAAR (http://www.decolonizing.ps). Hilal is among the founders of Campus in Camps, an experimental educational program established in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem (http://www.campusincamps.ps). In 2006, she obtained the title of research doctorate in transborder policies for daily life in the University of Trieste. She is a co-author of different research projects published and exhibited internationally including “Stateless Nation,” with Alessandro Petti and “Border devices,” with multiplicity. Recent publication include: “Political Subjectification, the Production of Space and the Folding of Polarity: the case of Deheishe Camp, Palestine” in Peripheries: Decentering Urban Theory (University of California Berkeley Press, 2012 forthcoming) “ “Return to Nature” in Ecological Urbanism (Lars Muller Publishers, 2010); “Unhoming” in Considering Forgiveness (Vera List Center for Art and Politics, NY, 2009); “Future Archaeology,” Afterall, 2009; “Self Urbanization and the Contours of Political Space in Deheishe Refugee Camp,” Jerusalem Quarterly No. 38, 2009.

Peter Kellett is an architect and social anthropologist with a PhD which combines both disciplines. His research and teaching focuses on housing in particular the interrelationships between social, spatial and material practices. Since the 1980s he has been conducting a long term ethnographic study in informal settlements in northern Colombia, and has worked on research projects in many parts of the world. One of his recent books is Rethinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America (with Felipe Hernandez). He is a Senior Lecturer in the Global Urban Research Unit at Newcastle University in England, and for most of 2013 he is working in Ethiopia as a Visiting Professor of Housing at Addis Ababa University.

Neema Kudva is associate professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University. She also directs the International Studies in Planning Program and is the faculty lead of the interdisciplinary Nilgiris Field Learning Center, a project of the Keystone Foundation and Cornell. Her most recent work is on small city urbanization and growth. She is co-editor of the Cities of the Global South Reader (forthcoming 2014), Rethinking Informalization (2005) and is completing a monograph on the city of Mangalore, a small city in south-western India.

Philipp Misselwitz is a Berlin-based architect and urban planner educated at Cambridge University (2007) and the AA (2001). Misselwitz is founding member of the architectural research group ’urban catalyst’ (2003) and co-initiator of ZwischenPalastNutzung. He has lead consultancies and research projects for the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and the United Nations. He is also the curator of "Grenzgeografien", "Liminal Spaces", "Refuge", "Space Time Dignity Rights", "Gwangju Folly II". Chair of International Urbanism at the University of Stuttgart (2010-2013). Chair of Habitat Unit/ Department of International Urbanism and Design at the Technische Universität Berlin (from April 2013). Network partner at Urban Catalyst studio (http://www.urbancatalyst-studio.de).

Omar Nagati is a Ph.D. candidate and practicing architect/urban planner living in Cairo. A graduate of Cairo University, he studied and taught at the University of British Columbia and University of California Berkeley, with a specific focus on informal urbanism. Nagati adopts an interdisciplinary approach to questions of urban history and design, and engages in a comparative analysis of urbanization processes in developing countries. He teaches Urban Design Studio at the Modern Sciences and Arts University in Giza and as a part-time instructor at Cairo University. Nagati has recently cofounded CLUSTER, a new platform for urban research and design initiatives downtown Cairo.

Jana Nakhal is a candidate for a Masters in Urban Design in the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut writing a thesis where she explores the intersections of urban planning and illegality in an informal settlement in South Lebanon where she explores her research interest in the intersections of landscape, politics, and planning. Nakhal holds a degree of Bachelor in Landscape Design (AUB’ date). She is an occasional contributor to the daily Al-Akhbar and Assafir newspapers.

Lucas Oesch is a geographer whose main themes of research and academic publications are urbanisation and migrations in the Middle East. In 2012, he earned a PhD in Development Studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva, with a doctoral thesis entitled “Governing temporariness: The urban planning apparatus of Palestinian refugee camps and informal settlements in Amman”. During his doctoral research, he was awarded fellowships from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries (KFPE). In addition, he has worked several years as a teaching assistant at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. He is also a PhD affiliate at the French Institute for the Near East (Ifpo) and has organised several conferences bringing together academics and professionals in Jordan on urban upgrading and on Palestinian refugee camps.

Sylvain Perdigon is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at AUB. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2011. His current research concerns questions of relatedness, ethics and embodiment in the Palestinian refugee camps of Tyre, Southern Lebanon. Recent publications include: "Bachelors' Corniche: Transnationality and the Unmaking of Intimacy Among Palestinian Youths in Jal Al-Bahr, South Lebanon" in: Manifestations of Identity: The Lived Reality of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, Muhammad Ali Khalidi (Ed.), Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2010. 93-108 and "L'Ethnographie à l'Heure des Martyrs." Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 65.4 (2010): 971-996.

Gerardo Sandoval is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management and Associate Director of the Center for Latina/o and Latin American Studies at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on the roles of immigrants in community regeneration, the responses of governments to the presence of immigrants, and the ways that transnational relationships shape spaces that immigrants inhabit. Dr. Sandoval’s recent publications include Immigrants and the Revitalization of Los Angeles: Development and Change in MacArthur Park (2010); “Transnational Placemaking in Small-Town America,” in Diálogos: Placemaking in Latino Communities, M. Rios and L. Vasquez, eds., and “Shadow Transnationalism: Cross-Border Networks and Planning Challenges of Transnational Unauthorized Immigrant Communities”, Journal of Planning Education and Research (2013). He earned his PhD in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley.

Ismael Sheikh Hassan is an urbanist and activist who has been involved in the context of Palestinian refugee camps and reconstruction projects in Lebanon. He is currently completing his doctoral dissertation at KULeuven and is also editor/co-author of an upcoming book titled - On Activism and Urbanism: Nahr el bared and Palestinian camps.

Natalia Silva Mora was trained as an architect and is currently working towards an MSc in Urban Development Planning at the Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College of London. Silva Mora has worked as an Urban Project Architect in Contexto Urbano S.A, one of the biggest design firms in Bogotá – Colombia. She has also worked as a Volunteer Architect and Member of the Board of Directors of Fundación JULIGON. JULIGON is a non-governmental organization bringing together a group of young architects who seek to practice architecture in ways that help the urban poor in Bogotá – Colombia.

CITY DEBATES 2013RETHINKING INFORMALITY: DESIGN TACTICS/ PLANNING STRATEGIES

BIOGRAPHIES

City Debates is the yearly conference organized by the Maters in Urban Planning & Policy and Masters in Urban Design at the American University of Beirut. Started in 2002, the series brings together professionals, academics, and students from Beirut and beyond to explore issues of contemporary relevance to the urbanization of the region. Over the past few years, City Debates has addressed issues such as Cultural Heritage and the Political of the Present, Security of/in the City, and Emerging Practices in Urban Design.

Titled Rethinking Informality: Design Tactics/Planning Strategies, City Debates 2013 will address the theme of informal spatial production as it materializes in different scalar levels and within multiple contexts of the Middle-East and beyond. By bringing together scholars, practicing planners and designers, as well as activists engaged in a reflection about the spatial production of informal settlements, their changing position in ever-growing cities, and their relation to both the agricultural and urban landscapes at the intersection of which they often stand, the event seeks to articulate a critical discourse about planning and design that goes beyond the traditional/professional understandings of these disciplines. Case studies will be taken from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt but also India, Columbia, Germany, France, the United States, and more to draw parallels across national contexts. In light of the centrality of forced population displacement movements in our region, special attention is given in refugee camps in the region.

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