Dynamics of informal settlements in Pacific island cities – SITI

The SITI project aims at developing knowledge and new agent-based simulation tools to analyze a particular mode of urban production, characteristic of the socio-spatial transformations and urban sprawl, of the capital cities of the Pacific islands (Port-Vila, Suva and Noumea). These areas and habitats called informal settlements, “villages in cities”, are home to an increasingly large part of the population. They form residential pockets of small constructions on the fringes of regulatory urbanization and its development. The management of these informal settlements, at the intersection of traditional and modern lifestyles, is therefore a major issue for the authorities in charge of urban planning. By crossing different research protocols and methods usually distant from each other (written archives, observations, open interviews, semi-directive interviews, questionnaires, spatial data, econometrics and artificial intelligence), we will have a full understanding of the urban dynamics that have produced and perpetuated informal settlements in the three Pacific cities.
To achieve this, this project is based on an interdisciplinary approach involving history, urban planning, geography, economics, remote sensing and artificial intelligence. It mobilizes researchers from five laboratories, and two companies, to study informal settlements in the capitals of Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia.