Informal settlement is the most pervasive mode of urbanization throughout cities of the global South, yet little is known of how informal urban design works as a production of urban space. This paper maps the emergence and transformation of street/laneway networks and buildings in a broad range of settlements. While such data cannot reveal the social, economic and political complexity of individual cases, it demonstrates the range of informal morphologies and self-organizational practices that produce them. Building types, plots, blocks, streets and lanes are analyzed to extract the informal rules or logics that are embodied within such morphologies. This is a nascent study that begins to reveal the ways in which informal settlement works to produce habitable land, affordable housing and public space. The prospect is a better knowledge base for understanding how such practices may or may not produce ‘slums’, how upgrading practices may be improved and how informal production may be anticipated and harnessed.

非正式定居是整个南方城市中最普遍的城市化模式，但人们对非正式城市设计如何作为城市空间生产的工作方式知之甚少。本文介绍了各种定居点中街道/车道网络和建筑物的出现和改造情况。尽管此类数据无法揭示单个案例的社会，经济和政治复杂性，但可以证明产生这些异常现象的非正式形态和自我组织实践的范围。分析建筑类型，地块，街区，街道和车道，以提取体现在这种形态中的非正式规则或逻辑。这是一项新生的研究，开始揭示非正式定居点如何工作来生产可居住的土地，负担得起的住房和公共空间。