Everyday Adaptations as Climate-Responsive Practices in Informal Settlements: Evidence from Mojo and Semanggi (Surakarta, Indonesia) and San Juan de Milaflores (Lima, Peru)

Everyday Adaptations as Climate-Responsive Practices in Informal Settlements: Evidence from Mojo and Semanggi (Surakarta, Indonesia) and San Juan de Milaflores (Lima, Peru).

Informal settlements in rapidly urbanising regions are sites of continuous material, social, and spatial transformation, where residents incrementally adapt their homes in response to evolving needs, everyday constraints, and intensifying climate stresses. Drawing on ongoing research within the research project Passive solutions in self-build and incremental housing: towards inclusive socio-ecological transformation in rapidly urbanising areas (PSSI)., this paper examines how residents in Surakarta (Indonesia) and Lima (Peru) negotiate shelter through day-to-day improvisations that enhance habitability, manage heat, reduce moisture, improve ventilation, or enable flexible spatial use. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, architectural inventories, and interviews with self-builders and local constructors, the study documents the subtle but consequential changes residents introduce—such as shading devices, material substitutions, adaptive openings, or low-cost water management practices—and analyses how these actions emerge from local knowledge, resource constraints, and collective norms.
The paper argues that these everyday adaptations constitute an under-recognised form of socio-ecological innovation with implications for inclusive planning and climate-responsive housing agendas. In both case study contexts, residents’ modifications reveal an iterative logic of problem-solving that aligns with climate-adaptive design principles, even though such knowledge is rarely acknowledged in formal housing policies, sustainability frameworks or simply local context. By foregrounding lived experiences and bottom-up practices, the study demonstrates how self-built environments can serve as critical arenas of incremental climate adaptation, offering insights into strategies that reduce vulnerability without triggering displacement or imposing prohibitive regulatory burdens.
The findings contribute to debates on housing justice, financialisation, and local-scale resilience by highlighting the need for planning approaches that support incrementality, build on, rather than overwrite, existing socio-material practices. The paper ultimately positions everyday adaptations as a key entry point for collaborative governance, the co-design of low-tech solutions, and equitable neighbourhood revitalisation, demonstrating their relevance for developing scalable and context-sensitive models of shelter transformation in the Global South.