Incremental City: An urban coding strategy to create livable future co-produced neighborhoods

Prognoses by the UN assume that by 2050 the number of inhabitants of informal settlements in the global south will increase significantly due to continuous population growth and urbanization.1 Various experts are demanding to accept the informal sector as the predominant form of future urban space production, anticipate the development of self-built settlements, and incorporate them into formal planning processes. 2 The concept of the Incremental City described in this paper takes up the above-mentioned approach of anticipation and develops it further into a hybrid urban development model that brings together aspects of top-down planning and bottom-up self-organization as well as giving ample space for informal selfbuilding.3 This planning approach depends on good governance and the principles of participation in decisionmaking processes, collaboration during implementation and joint responsibility for the result. In this context, it is particularly decisive how the interface between the formal and the informal level is designed and how the power of decision and responsibility are allocated, to enable the successful coproduction of future urban extensions. The urban coding of this model is based on two pillars: the urban plan, a structural concept and the associated key figures for city planning, as well as the urban code, the fundamental rules and obligations for inhabitants and responsible authorities. Through the combination of spatial urban structures and application-oriented regulations, an alternative urban development model is created that may serve as a tool in various planning processes in the context of future co-produced cities. This paper outlines the key aspects of this planning strategy based on a dissertation published in 2021. In addition, the results of an urban planning master studio at KIT show how these planning principles work in a fictional planning task and how they could be applied in similar planning situations.4