Granted Informality in Introverted Archipelagos - Everyday Urbanism in the Global South

Abstract

Informality has been, in the past decades, an overused concept manoeuvred by technocratic and hegemonic Global North discourses, a manipulated cliché consistently paired with underdeveloped countries, poverty, illegality and excluded social groups. However, informal processes are far from being so homogeneous and redundant. In a world invaded by an enraged urbanisation pace, where globality is in place, there is a strong need for dislocating the centre of urban debate, engaging with emergent Global South studies for a locally excavated theory. With the spread of the global, potentiating anonymity, impersonality and generic phenomena, arises the necessity to fortify cultural, religious and ethical links for social integration, sense of belonging and placemaking. As an architect engaged in this transdisciplinary debate, the study aims to excavate how can informal everyday public spaces promote a liveable, equitable and healthy arena for a transnational Middle Eastern society, such as the Kingdom of Bahrain. There are generic and global objectives within the urban theory legacy, as well as intentions directly linked to the public life studies. Besides, the research aims to understand the continuous spread and success of informal spaces and their rich liveability when compared with formal ones; the social mixing and segregation; the privileged activities and their spatial arrangement; and also to be able to inform new design strategies social and culturally adapted. Using a pertinent sample that represents Bahraini informal reality, four case studies were selected and dissected - Karbabad, Malkiya, Bussaiteen and Manama, through a qualitative approach uphold by interviews, public surveys, mield observations, photo report, dérives, archival research, etc. Also, formal spaces and some "vignettes" were addressed for a holistic comparison and comprehension. Findings show that informality in Bahrain is legal, permitted, granted and sponsored by the State, yet invisibly controlled and surveilled. It is not a system associated only to the poor but reaches all the society apart from the social elites segregated in high quality, walled, private and secured green ghettos. Furthermore, the study disclosed two categories of informal spaces - the micro-spaces, embedded in the residential neighbourhoods (like the outdoor majlis), and the macro-spaces, labeled as "all-in-one" (commercial, recreational, social activities), in rather large, mlexible and movable structures in expectant reclaimed areas in the seafront of massive masterplans and in some leftovers in the hinterland interstices. Moreover, it revealed that spaces were built by the population for the population in a "DIY" attitude exposing the social segregation in some settings. Remarkably, it is of the upmost importance and urgency that architects acknowledge that public space is socially constructed and its domain and expertise is shared by many disciplines; that morphology alone cannot produce socially acceptable, equitable and accessible environments; and that informal spaces mindings can inform the provision of new public spaces by disassembling ready-made western designs towards a cultural adapted spatiality.