One of the North-South links we will explore at Doors 8 concerns the importance of un-designed urban areas as sites of social innovation. Half or more of the inhabitants of major South Asian cities like Delhi are ‘illegal’, but they are economically active, too. In Europe interest is growing in so-called ‘free zones’ as breeding grounds for creativity. An excellent report from Urban Unlimited called ‘The Shadow City’ compares freezones in Rotterdam and Brussels with other examples in Berlin, Helsinki, Vienna and Naples. The report promotes the idea that some areas be left deliberately unplanned – protected, even, from the predations of politicians, social reformers, and developers. Now there’s a thought: Saving cities from design in the name of creativity. The text of ‘The Shadow City’ may be donwloaded from this page (look at the bottom left for “Shadow City in english”).There’s a thoughtful article on the complex issues raised by slums and development here.. I also just discovered that Robert Neuwirth has written a book called Shadow City and has a blog on squatters and squatter cities around the world.