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Program Workshop "Megacities-Megachallenge. Informal Dynamics of Global Change"

February 25th – 26th 2009, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

At the workshop participants of the research program and experts from Bangladesh, China and Germany will convene to exchange findings and insights about informal dimensions of (mega)urban development and their relations with processes of global change.

While concepts of informality or informal are frequently used by scientists as well as by practitioners and politicians, there is hardly a broader agreement, let alone a definition on what is denoted by the term.

Informality may refer to the status of settlement structures as well as to the way, victims of flooding organize themselfes in order to retain a certain social order.

It describes the transaction modes within supply and trade networks, which are the backbone of urban food supply, as well as the organizing logic behind health care systems for large shares of the population.

There are industries that are to a large extent characterized by informal relations between small scale producers and suppliers, but also officially registered businesses often work partly informal, for instance relying on informal non-written working contracts with their employees.

Official and legal decisions on all levels are taken after informal consultations and under the influence of informal networks, and the most influential encounters of different actors within governance processes often take place informally.

At the upcoming workshop these theoretical as well as practical aspects of informality will be discussed and linked with various sectors and disciplines’ research fields.