The Atlas demonstrates the indispensable value that is generated by investigating the spatial logic of informal settlement, as this exposes factors often overlooked in broad-brush statistics and geospatial analysis based on artificial intelligence. Focusing on fifty-one sites, the Atlas offers a nuanced spatial analysis at different scale levels and reveals the processes and outcomes of self-organized urban design. In doing so, it offers learnings for context-sensitive policies for affordable housing and neighbourhood infrastructure in rapidly growing cities.

Raf Tuts, Director, Global Solutions Division, UN-Habitat

We know very little about most of the informal settlements that house over a billion urban dwellers. This book advances and deepens our understanding of these settlements' development and expansion over time in all their diversity and complexity.

David Satterthwaite, International Institute for Environment and Development

This is a vital empirical consolidation of the heterogeneous ways urban settlements are being composed and governed. The "informal" is always extending itself across new terrain and vernaculars; something always being worked and worked on in incessant processes of becoming unsettled and resettled.

AbdouMaliq Simone, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield

A nuanced, highly accessible and thought-worthy text ... A major accomplishment

Journal of Urban Design

One of the most ambitious attempts to date of comparative research ... What Dovey and his team have accomplished is impressive.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research