Reimagining Informality through Public Space in Buenos Aires & Informal Vending in New York City
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Executive Summary
We spent the first half of the semester researching Barrio 31, an informal settlement in Buenos Aires. Just a few days before our trip, the coronavirus epidemic became a global concern that compromised our on-the-ground research in Argentina. We then decided to expand our scope to include street vending in Corona and Jackson Heights in Queens, the neighborhoods that in a matter of days became the center of the epidemic in the United States.
Barrio 31 and Corona and Jackson Heights are united, in our collective imagination, by more than the pandemic. While 5,295 miles apart, these places are the home of diverse, migrant communities that work on city streets every day to make a living. Informality is not a condition unique to the global South. It is found in virtually all contexts. Urban informality is presented as an exception to the “normal” or “rational” forms of urbanization. For us, it is a consequence of deep inequalities that are embedded in the built environment. As of 2018, 25% of the world’s population lives in informal settlements. Since 2014, the number of people living in informal settlements grew to over 1 billion and will continue to grow in light of rapid urbanization.
As we’ve seen through the pandemic, quarantines and the closures of open space exacerbates the poverty in informal settlements. We aimed to create tools that mitigate the effects of informality in these communities, and assist them in reclaiming their public spaces. We also wanted to explore how we can influence public space from a digital perspective. As quarantines and social distancing become new norms for cities, urban planning needs to produce new forms of influencing the built environment. Our studio was focused on producing these tools.