Micro-plans vs Slum Upgrading: Facing the Challenge of Regenerating Informal Settlements

Under the pressure of increasing tough global competition and due to the weaknesses characterising the traditional slum upgrading approach, more and more often, the 'do nothing' or evictions are used as the most rapid ways of solving the 'informal settlement' problem. To counter this trend in this paper we hint at the requirement of looking beyond slum upgrading and experimenting with new solutions. Drawing on the criticisms of this approach as well as a project carried out by the Bari (Italy) group of Engineers Without Frontiers NGO in Kamza, a Municipality at the edge of the metropolitan area of Tirana in Albania, we maintain that such an approach can only solve some 'technical' problems; this however leaves dramatic social, economic and environmental problems pervading the informal settlements' everyday life unchanged. Finally, we propose slum upgrading as a participative regeneration micro-plan whose contents strongly depend on the context in which it has to be developed, but whose goals should be an integration of upgrading solutions and the strategy of urban development, legalization and spatial reorganization of the slum and its rehabilitation