Climate urbanism through the lens of informal settlements

For climate urbanism to be relevant in informal settlements, it’s proponents needs to embrace the messy reality that there are no easily implemented, off-the-shelf adaptation solutions. Existing neoliberal climate adaptation responses, which often entrench inequality, are unlikely to succeed in informal settlements. The current groundswell of demands for social justice provide the needed impetus for exploring and experimenting with what adaptation might look like in informal settlements. This contribution suggests two areas for careful consideration when applying climate urbanism concepts to informal settlement contexts, namely (1) the temporal tension between adapting to climate change risk and simultaneously having to deal with other, perhaps more immediate, risks, and (2) the use of the concept of “transformative adaptation” to guide practice-based collaborative interventions.