French, MatthewRamirez-Lovering, DiegoSinharoy, Sheela S.Turagabeci, AmeliaLatif, IhsanLeder, KarinBrown, Rebekah2025-05-232025-05-232374-8834http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85131585633&partnerID=8YFLogxKhttps://hdl.handle.net/1885/733752511The COVID-19 pandemic represents a turning point in the way things are done, globally and across sectors. We reflect on approaches to informal settlements and argue for a turn from ‘upgrading’ to ‘revitalisation’. We conceptualise revitalisation as encompassing three core tenets: planetary health, transdisciplinarity, and a people-centred approach. In our vision, revitalisation approaches would take a big-picture view of informal settlements that recognises the inter-connectedness of people and nature within complex urban systems; integrates perspectives from various academic disciplines, non-academic sectors, and communities for knowledge generation; and centres informal settlement residents and communities as experts and partners in urban praxis.This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (GB) [OPOH grant 205222/Z/16/Z]. We acknowledge the input of RISE consortium colleagues (funded by the Wellcome Trust, [ref: 205222/B/16/Z]) and invaluable insights from those living in urban informal settlements with whom we have worked over the years. We thank the three anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive feedback and suggestions.enPublisher Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.informal settlementsplanetary healthslumstransdisciplinarityUrban2020-09-0110.1080/23748834.2020.181233185131585633