To learn a new way of designing the city, let’s look at slums

Obviously the idea is not to put a positive spin on infrastructural shortcomings and social pressures. Instead, we need to think about the dynamics of adaptation activated in these places, analyzing their value as a possible antidote to design determinism.

Why should we look at slums to think about and cope with major global crises?

The answer comes from the study of evolutionary biology.

Little of the work of evolutionary biologists has found its way into architecture. Yet what they have to tell us can be important for those who design. Stephen J. Gould, for example, has explained that evolution uses the redundancy and variability of forms to respond to unpredictable environmental conditions. The classic example is the sixth finger of the panda, a previously existing bony growth that becomes a tool when the animal – originally a carnivore – wound up handling bamboo to gain its nutrition.

The proliferation and redundancy of these forms is defined with the term “spandrel.” The possibilit of using them to fulfill an unforeseen function is called exaptation (functional coopting).

These two concepts of redundancy and variability of use offer incredibly practical applications in the design of resilience seen as adaptation to unexpected conditions. What might happen if like the panda we began to use tools that we already have (and now consider useless) to cope with the great problems of the present?

To do this, we have to think in an associative, non-linear way. Many knows how to do this, science explains. Creative systems – according to the geneticist Ewan Birney – are characterized by the proliferation of forms and interconnections and by the ability to generate non-linear thoughts that do not necessarily have a preset use, since they rely on association. The paleoanthropologist Heather Pringle has shown that creativity is the result of a survival mechanism that is activated in crisis mode, with respect to the standard mode of linear thinking. Biological evolution, in short, has not been a gradual process, but a series of radical, innovative and seemingly illogical adaptations on the part of organisms in moments of crisis.