Architecture September 25, 2006, 11:0AM EST

Learning from Informal Urban Economies

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the residents of squatter cities will have much to teach us about resourcefulness and innovation

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Throughout his career, Stewart Brand—editor, author, lecturer, and futurist—has focused on such subjects as digital media, education, and architecture. He's perhaps best known for founding the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968, and the WELL, an early precursor of MySpace, in 1984, among other pursuits.

Today, he splits his time between serving as president for the Long Now Foundation, a private organization that promotes long-term thinking (as in 10,000 years into the future) and responsibility, and working for Global Business Network (GBN), a scenario consultancy. (He co-founded both.) He has increasingly been analyzing how the world's squatter cities are serving as centers of entrepreneurship and innovative design.

URBAN ENVIRONMENT.

In a way, it's a fitting follow-up to the eight years of research that culminated in Brand's 1994 book, How Buildings Learn. That volume addressed how structures changed and evolved over time. Brand's newest research on urban squatter communities can be seen as addressing, at least in part, the question: "How do cities learn?"

Brand has been presenting his research on squatter cities at conferences and to corporate and institutional audiences around the world, as part of a talk with a larger context. Called City Planet, the talk examines how urban areas are environmentally friendly, provide economic opportunities for poor women in developing nations, and are simply growing at a dizzying pace.

BusinessWeek.com's Reena Jana recently spoke with Brand about the past, present, and future of squatter cities, both within the U.S. and around the globe. They also discussed how big business, designers, and architects might tap into squatter cities for both inspiration and to help their residents improve their quality of life through innovative (and potentially profitable) goods and services. An edited excerpt of their conversation follows:

What's a striking example of innovative design growing out of a squatter community?

The squatter community that I live in, a houseboat community in Sausalito (Calif.) is a good example. It started in the 1960s and now there are 400 houseboats. Like all great squatter cities, it became gentrified, and was made part of the town [San Francisco]. It's the classic case of pairing enormous resourcefulness and minimal resources.

Are there examples from the developing world that are particularly intriguing models of architectural innovation?

I think so. I was just reading a book about Bombay before it was Mumbai. There was a story about a company building towers 35 stories high. The construction workers were given rudimentary materials—lumber and rope and fabric and sheet metal—to construct cheap temporary housing near the site.

This instant legal slum would be their home for the duration of the project. What was astonishing was that the workers actually occupied the building itself as they worked on it and encamped there, where there was shelter. It was a highly economical way to build. Perhaps soon we'll be looking to squatter cities for design ideas, much as we looked to biology. Rather than bio-mimicry, we'll be considering squatter-mimicry.

In developing nations, squatters often occupy "uninhabitable" areas with no legal electricity or water supplies. Could their homes be considered as models for disaster relief housing?

It really depends on the time people need to be in a refugee community. If it's only a week, temporary tents are fine. But if more than that, well, we could look to squatter cities.