Environmental Design Assistant Professor Jota Samper recently gave a talk on TEDxCU. The talk focuses on Professor Samper's collaborations with students and communities alongside his research on informal Settlements. Informal settlements (what some call slums) are the most common form of urbanization on the planet, accounting for one-third of the total urban form. It is expected that by the mid-twenty-first-century, up to three billion people will live in these urban environments. However, we lack a consistent mapping method to pinpoint where that informality is located or how it expands.
Samper explores the implications of that growth in the atlas of informality and how by visualizing informal communities, we can be made aware of innovations by these communities that can save the planet, TED selected this talk to be part of the TEDx library on TED.com.