Housing Planning for Informal Settlements: Pante-Macassar (East Timor)

Regeneration of informal settlements is a topic being studied worldwide. Generally, cities comprise informal settlements, and consequently sustainability problems, requiring urgent actions. Often, the solutions regarding informal settlements do not adequately consider the local features, leading to difficulties such as environmental and public health deteriorations, weakening of housing access or troubles related to economic sustainability. Additionally, some housing programs don’t fit in community characteristics of social inequalities and poverty.  In this sense, this paper intends to show the results of the development of a research methodology, to carry out strategies and to pursuit strategies of rethinking informal housing settlements, in an integrated and resilient way. It concludes with the application of a theoretical model to an informal neighbourhood in Pante Macassar, a city in the Oé-Cusse region of East Timor. The interest in this approach results from an ongoing Doctorate program in Civil Engineering at the University of Beira Interior, focused on the development of a set of good practice guidelines for the informal city regeneration. It aims to identify and assess informal and unhealthy features of urban settlements and their integration at city scale. The theoretical-conceptual issue addresses the informal settlements, comparing with formal housing programs