Innovative Practices at the Intersection of Urban Formality and Informality: The Case of Central European Cities and ‘Inconspicuous Innovations’

Slavomíra Ferenčuhová, Petr Jehlička, Terezie Lokšová, Anja Decker

Abstrakt: Innovative responses to everyday challenges of urban life often appear at the intersection of formality and informality. For example, food provisioning and food waste reduction, water management, housing, or adaptation to the local impacts of climate change, all represent areas where formal, top-down strategies meet with informal, domestic tactics of dealing with everyday tasks. We argue that Central and Eastern European cities and societies abound with routine, domestic everyday practices of individuals and households that, as we claim, represent examples of informal solutions to daily issues. We call certain types of these solutions ‘inconspicuous innovations’, stressing their inventiveness and creativity (e.g., ways of using rainwater, reusing material for construction work, reducing food waste), as well as their potential to substitute or enrich formal solutions.

Our presentation will close the session “SS06: Urban informality practices in Central and Eastern Europe: Agents of globalisation?”. We will outline the concept of ‘inconspicuous innovations’ and explain how it contributes to the aim to recognize the region of Central and Eastern Europe as a source of knowledge needed to respond to global challenges.

Web konference naleznete zde.