978-3-0356-0669-0_LessonsOfInformality

Felix Heisel
Bisrat Kifle (eds.)
Lessons of
Informality
Architecture and
Urban Planning
for Emerging
Territories –
Concepts from
Ethiopia

Visual impressions of
Addis Ababa
Photography by Thomas Aquilina
The qualities of informality are not limited to its physical manifestation or architecture,
but also encompass its underlying spatial, social, cultural, traditional, economic and urban
evolutionary processes. Rather than an absence of rules, informality represents negotiation,
trial and error and continuous updating throughout time, involving a multitude
of actors. In these images, Thomas Aquilina presents the stock and flow of people and
goods on the border of formal and informal economies throughout Ethiopia’s capital,
highlighting the incredible density of interactions and activities. Informality, in one way
or another, clearly affects almost every citizen of Addis Ababa in daily life.

6 Lessons of Informality

Contents 11
Contents
Preface: From documentaries to architectural strategies ....................... 12
Introduction: Informality in emerging territories Felix Heisel ................. 14
Space creation and a sense of responsibility . ............................ 34
Housing in an informally grown city Fasil Giorghis ........................... 42
Landownership and the leasehold system Wubshet Berhanu. .................. 53
A “new” Addis Ababa Marjan Kloosterboer. .................................... 62
The ruralization of urban centres in Ethiopia Heyaw Terefe, Felix Heisel. ....... 71
Social, cultural and traditional context . ................................. 74
Social dynamics and development Alula Pankhurst ........................... 81
Persisting meaning and evolving spaces Genet Alem. .......................... 93
Bottom-up insurance systems Bisrat Kifle ................................... 108
Self-employment as economic empowerment. .......................... 114
The economic importance of recycling Felix Heisel, Bisrat Kifle. ............. 121
Microeconomies, a formalized strategy Lia GabreMariam W................. 129
Addis Ababa, a rental city Perrine Duroyaume. ............................... 134
City preservation through tourism Tadesse Girmay Gebreegziabher. .......... 142
Paradigm shifts in urban strategies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
From density to intensity Felix Heisel. ...................................... 157
Materializing informality Dirk E. Hebel ..................................... 166
Building laws for innovation Elias Yitbarek, Felix Heisel ..................... 171
Decentralized infrastructural systems Tesfaye Hailu Bekele. .................. 177
Spatial dialogic Sascha Delz. .............................................. 190
_Spaces / The documentary series Felix Heisel, Bisrat Kifle. ............... 201
Editors and contributors. ................................................... 214
Acknowledgements. ........................................................ 220
Illustration credits. ......................................................... 222
DVD _Spaces. ....................................................... Backcover

14 Lessons of Informality
Introduction: Informality in
emerging territories
Chances, challenges and visions
Felix Heisel
While working on this book, we engaged with a world that is often described
by what it is not rather than by what it is. Even the words that appear most in this
introduction are often defined antonymically: the informal is characterized by an
absence of formal regulations instead of the presence of informal qualities; developing
countries are marked by the fact that they are not yet developed. Although
we do not consider this tendency a problem, but rather an opportunity to work
within a wide range of possible meanings, we still aim to use these first pages to
communicate our understanding of informal settings and our interpretation of
these terms as well as the historic context of their development. The second part
of this introduction argues for the relevance of Ethiopia as a case study for the international
phenomenon of informality and the importance of understanding its
processes for planning a resilient city. It is this mindset that led us to collect, edit
and publish the following contributions, and this introduction is intended to convey
these underlying thoughts to create a common basis for discussion.
A history of the informal
Historically, the meaning of the term “informal” has developed over time
and only today includes the wide array of topics scholars associate with the word.
In the 1970s, two influential publications framed the term as a way to describe an
economic phenomenon in relation to (un)employment in developing territories.
The British anthropologist Keith Hart, who later became the Director of the Centre
of African Studies at the University of Cambridge, made the distinction between
formal and informal sectors based on personal observations in Ghana. In preparing
an often-cited 1973 study, Hart initially aimed to assess the high levels of unemployment
that resulted from limited formal employment opportunities in combination
with a high migration rate. Instead he discovered a widespread informal
economy in which people creatively mingled formal and informal strategies to
generate their livelihoods. He thus argued that workers who were surplus to the

20 Lessons of Informality
Developing and emerging
Despite the obvious importance of
categories like “developing” and “developed”
in world affairs, the exact criteria
separating developing and developed
countries remain unclear. Often, developing
countries are described simply as
not yet developed. Consequently, one
would assume that “developed” has a Use of mobile phones in Addis Ababa
distinct meaning. Kofi Annan, former
Secretary General of the United Nations, has summarized a developed country as
“one that allows all its citizens to enjoy a free and healthy life in a safe environment”.
14 There is no internationally accepted and more specific definition available,
yet strategists, business leaders and the media often use these terms to describe
the world.
Throughout time, this black-and-white system has dissolved into five smaller
stages: least developed, frontier, emerging, newly industrialized and advanced. Several
considerations influenced these changes, ranging from the rather cruel assumption
that the progressive verb form (develop-ing) assumes evolution and is thus not
always applicable, to the correct realization that the word should be replaced because
of its negative connotation. Increasingly, the term “country” has been substituted
with “territory” or, most recently, economic descriptions, as the underlying
criteria mostly take into account market values rather than the qualities of a country.
The emerging territories
The title of this book refers to one of these categories, the emerging. The International
Finance Corporation first used the term, which was coined in 1981, to
promote new mutual fund investment in selected and potentially profitable developing
countries. Since then, references to emerging markets have become ubiquitous,
but definitions of the term vary widely. Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu
warn that in order “to understand emerging markets, it is important to consider
carefully the ways in which they are emerging and the extent to which they are
genuine markets.” 15
In 2008, the Russian economist Vladimir Kvint published an article in Forbes
that defined an emerging-market country as “a society transitioning from a dictatorship
to a free market-oriented economy, with increasing economic freedom,

Introduction: Informality in emerging territories 27
A
B
A
C D E
The five housing typologies in Addis Ababa
Villa (A), Row house (B), Condominium (C), Apartment (D), and Small house or Shed (E) 29

Space creation and
a sense of responsibility
Photography by Marta H. Wisniewska
Along with its historically grown social and functional diversity, the heterogeneity of
typologies, mass, void and greenery in Addis Ababa is one of the city’s most important
values. Marta H. Wisniewska’s photographs depict this multiplicity of scales and elements
in overlapping formal and informal areas of the city. While the images show that the
boundary of formality is often hard to define, they also illustrate the importance of
the human scale and a feeling of identity in the design of climate-responsive, adaptive,
flexible and local spaces.

Visual impressions of Addis Ababa 41

The ruralization of urban centres in Ethiopia 71
The ruralization of urban
centres in Ethiopia
An excerpt from interviews
with Heyaw Terefe
Edited by Felix Heisel
In principle, the typologies used by the majority of the population in rural
and urban settings are very similar. In the countryside, people have lived for many
centuries in tukuls, the rural shelter model. And in cities, people now live in korkoro
bets, which is the urban shelter model. However, there are very few differences
between these two typologies, while the newly developed homes of high-income
settlers, independent of their location, are very different from either tukuls or korkoro
bets. The distinction is less a question of location and more a question of resources.
A shelter can and will be used for different functions, yet a house is designed
for a single, specialized purpose. This constitutes the basic difference between a
shelter and a house. In a shelter, there is usually no differentiation of functions:
animals and humans live together, sleeping and living take place in the space, and
businesses can operate from within the same structure. The objective of a shelter is
to serve basic needs, most importantly protection from weather and other external
hazards.
A house, on the other hand, is based on more advanced objectives: in addition
to meeting basic needs, it aims to satisfy desires, which in social science are
called “wants”. In short, wants are concerned with satisfaction, while needs address
survival. Over time, one can clearly observe how – with a rise in income –
occupants start to introduce wants into their housing typologies in order to add an
element of satisfaction, beyond being content with survival. However, it is important
to remember that in Ethiopia, the majority of living arrangements in both rural
and urban areas, especially in informal settlements, are shelters.
The similarities in these living arrangements are one reason for and possibly
also a result of ruralization. While urbanization in rural areas is a commonly accepted
and often-described process, Ethiopia and many other emerging territories
also experience the opposite – the ruralization of their urban centres. These cities

72 Space creation and a sense of responsibility
A tukul and korkoro bet next to each other
In tukuls, animals and humans live together.
all face unprecedented growth caused mostly by high migration rates. Understandably,
people moving from rural to urban areas carry with them the luggage of their
past lives. Their values and traditions do not change overnight simply because of
a change in location (assuming that this would be necessary to lead a life in the
city). Migrants bring their rural life into the cities – and in such high numbers that
as a result the cities begin to change, rather than the migrants.
Ruralization involves traditions, social hierarchies, perceptions of life and
housing, and economic activities. The phenomenon helps to explain the scale of
economic activity in informal settlements, or the way settlers live and construct
their houses whenever an opportunity arises. All of these actions are very much
related to what settlers were doing daily in rural areas.
Both urban and rural have in recent years altered their definitions, with direct
effects on terms such as urbanization and ruralization. While urbanization used to
be understood as an increase in the proportion of inhabitants living in cities, it
increasingly refers to an increase in the number of people living an urban life. The
same can be said about ruralization, which then consequently also applies to the
number of migrants in cities living a rural lifestyle. Mobile services, TVs and newspapers
– communication systems that originated in cities and are increasingly
available in rural areas – are parts of an urban lifestyle. On the other hand, street
vending, urban agriculture and living with extended family in a single room are all
examples of ruralization in urban areas. These practices can be observed everywhere
in Addis Ababa, but also in many other African or developing territories.
Interestingly, this understanding reduces the importance of location in the
definition of urban and rural: if a person has access to urban facilities or activities
while residing in a rural area, he or she is basically urbanized. This happens even

_Spaces / The documentary series 201
_Spaces /
The documentary series
From cinematic documentation
to implementation strategies
Felix Heisel, Bisrat Kifle
From 7 to 11 April 2014, the documentary series _Spaces, specifically the two
films Disappearing Spaces and Emerging Spaces, was screened at the seventh World
Urban Forum (WUF) in Medellín, Columbia. The WUF is a biannual, non-legislative
forum organized by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. Each
time, a different city hosts the event, which generally attracts an estimated 10,000
participants from 160 countries. The conference’s goal is to examine the most
pressing issues facing the world today in the area of human settlements, including
rapid urbanization and its impact on cities, communities, economies, policies and
climate change. 1
As part of an Ethiopian delegation, Bisrat Kifle travelled to Columbia in order
to display Housing Sector Development: Making Shelter Assets Work, a project funded
by the Cities Alliance and organized by the Housing Development and Government
Buildings Construction Bureau of the Federal Ministry of Urban Development,
Housing and Construction in Ethiopia. In one of the forums at WUF7,
_ Spaces was screened to international guests in the presence of high-ranking government
officials from Ethiopia.
The screening started with high expectations and anxiety from the audience,
up to the moment when a minister walked out of the cinema and ordered the Ethiopian
delegates to halt the screening immediately. For the presenters, this was unexpected
and shocking, and raised the question of whether to terminate the screening
of the film or respect the wish of the remaining audience to continue. Ultimately,
the decision was made to continue with the presentation. At the end, the minister
returned to attend the discussions. He seemed genuinely surprised by the warm
response from the audience and the appreciation of the Ethiopian government and
its efforts to solve the housing problem. One spectator was overwhelmed by the
scale of the housing programme, while for others the involvement of micro and
small-scale enterprises and the commitment of the government made the strongest

204 Lessons of Informality
Poster for Disappearing Spaces
Poster for Supporting Spaces
Poster for Emerging Spaces
Poster for Recycling Spaces
Poster for Originating Spaces
Poster for Materializing Spaces
The structure developed in these films combines two elements, the subjective
and very personal points of view of selected inhabitants of Addis Ababa, and expert
opinions of academics and professionals. The aim is a heterogeneous collection of
various aspects and interpretations of a theme that enable the audience to reach its
own “objective” interpretation. Each 15-minute documentary uses a similar timeline,
following the protagonist for about 12 hours on a typical day. When necessary

Editors and contributors 215
Editors
Felix Heisel is an architect and researcher currently working in the Assistant
Professorship of Architecture and Construction of Dirk E. Hebel at the ETH Zürich
as well as the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore. He has previously taught and
lectured at the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City
Development in Addis Ababa, the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, and the Berlin
University of the Arts. His extensive research on informal processes led him, among
other publications and design proposals, to establish the documentary series
_Spaces in 2011.
Bisrat Kifle is an architect currently engaged in teaching and research work
at the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development
in Addis Ababa. From 2008 to 2009, he taught design studios at the ETH
Zürich in the Chair of Architecture and Design of Marc Angélil, where he collaborated
on different research projects, including the Addis_Urban Laboratory. Bisrat
has designed various neighbourhoods while working for the Grand Housing Programme
in Addis Ababa in addition to practising in his own office, which won the
prize for best affordable low-cost housing in Ethiopia in 2011. In the same year, he
co-initiated the research project _Spaces.
Contributors
Genet Alem is a lecturer in International Planning Studies at the School of
Spatial Planning at Dortmund University of Technology, where she is also a guest
lecturer at the PLIQ (Spatial Planning Education in Iraq) programme. Previously,
she worked for several years at the Addis Ababa Works and Urban Development
Bureau as an architect and lectured on land and property management at the Ethiopian
Civil Service University. Genet holds a PhD and MSc in Urban and Regional
Planning from TU Dortmund and an architecture degree from La CUJAE in Havana,
Cuba. The built environment and multiculturalism in the dynamics and formations
of urban spaces are her research interest.
Thomas Aquilina is a designer and researcher in Cambridge. He has practised
and researched architecture and urban design for architectural studios in London,
the research centre LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, and at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme in Nairobi.

216 Lessons of Informality
Thomas’s ongoing research explores the architectures of downtown African cities,
particularly focusing on the emergent social implications of everyday spatial practices
for designing in conditions of informal growth.
Wubshet Berhanu is an Associate Professor and holds an MSc in urban design
and a PhD in urban and regional planning. For more than twenty-five years, Wubshet
taught at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at Addis Ababa
University. He then continued as Head of Department and Associate Dean of the
Faculty of Technology-South (now the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building
Construction and City Development) for over ten years. He has published articles
in peer-reviewed journals on urban pattern analysis, urban land and housing developments,
and urban policy. From 2006 to 2008, he served as City Manager of
Addis Ababa. Wubshet is a founding member of the Association of Ethiopian Architects
(AEA) and the winner of the 2014 AEA Urban and Regional Planning
award.
Sascha Delz is an architect and researcher working at the intersection of architecture,
urban design and urban studies. After collaborating with Diller Scofidio
+ Renfro in New York, he worked as an exhibition designer, design instructor and
researcher at the Department of Architecture at the ETH Zürich and the Future
Cities Laboratory in Singapore. In addition to his MArch, he completed his PhD at
the ETH Zürich in 2015, investigating urban transformations under the premise of
international development cooperation in Ethiopia. Currently teaching in the
Chair of Architecture and Design of Marc Angélil, Sascha directs the seminar Urban
Mutations on the Edge.
Perrine Duroyaume has conducted research on urban development in Ethiopia
for more than ten years, including in Debre Berhan on an urban sanitation
programme and in Gondar for a cultural development project. Interested in changing
Ethiopian cities, she has focused her fieldwork research on housing access in
Addis Ababa during a crucial period, from 2005 to 2010. For the French Centre for
Ethiopian Studies, she has coordinated workshops to promote urban research on
Ethiopia. Currently, she is the programme officer at F3E, a network supporting
French NGOs and local authorities.
Lia GabreMariam W. has extensive experience working in the urban sector
as both a researcher and a practitioner. She worked for the city administration of
Addis Ababa on the revision of its master plan fifteen years ago, and is now working

www.birkhauser.com
Never before have cities been so important. Today, cities are home to
the majority of the world’s population, accommodate most of global
production, and are the goal of millions of migrants around the world.
Yet, increasingly, our cities are growing informally, planned and built by
non-professionals. Informality resembles an evolutionary process more
than a simple absence of rules. In itself, informality is neither illegal,
nor dysfunctional, nor indicative of poverty; in fact, its actors, skills and
capital are probably our best chance to solve the world’s growing
housing crisis.
While informal settlements are rightly criticized for their lack of hygiene
and low-level living conditions, their underlying social and cultural
networks are a testimonial to the unwavering courage and resilience of
their inhabitants. Equally, the associated informal economic activities
proliferate and basic urban services are increasingly provided informally.
Using the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa as an example, this publication
by an interdisciplinary team of authors from urbanism, sociology and
architecture analyzes informal housing options as well as economic
strategies such as microloan or bottom-up insurance systems. It introduces
typical informal professions such as the Kuré-Yalew (refuse
collector), who acts as an “urban miner” and contributes a valuable
service to the community by recycling materials. Thus, Lessons of
Informality describes an array of planning strategies and possibly even
a roadmap to a resilient city in emerging territories.
The book includes a DVD of _Spaces, a series of six documentaries on
informality in Addis Ababa.