چكيده فارسي :
Currently, more than one billion people reside in urban iformal settlements across the globe. This population is estimated to grow to 1.4 billion by 2020. Urban informal settlements are self-designed, self engineered and self built developments, created by their own dwellers. Residents of such developments are considered as under-privileged, excluded, segregated or marginalised, only because of their illegal nature. Globally, informal settlement’s growth is at a faster rate than the formal developments. Moreover, the growth rate of informal settlements often exceeds renewal processs and upgrading programmes. Taking various shapes and typologies, urban informal settlements has become integrated into the broader urban fabric. This paper argues that informal settlements embody the key urban design ideas posited by new urbanism: high density, compact, walkable, diverse and multiuse, car-free and transit oriented. On top of that, their community is a strong social capital and centre of creativity and ingenuity. Therefore, they have the right to exist as a normal part of everyday urbanism. This paper aims to privide insight for future urban researchers and policy makers on this subject, by creating a theoretical foundation. Furthermore, it will introduce a contextual platform for reserachers as a robust case for future studies to examine the argument declared in this paper. This context, Iran, is a country that has been tackling with the issue of fast growth of such settlements for decades. Currently, revitalising and regeneration programmes are introduced at national level and is being delivered. Therefore, this less-studied context has an immense potential to be looked at with different approach that this paper offers for achieving more efficient results.
