Slums

Arch. Naushaba Azhar

Lect. 10
In the later part
of the 20th
century,
slums
exploded
worldwide,
becoming a
cause for
serious
concern
among
humanitarian
organizations
Slum populations are growing by more than
200,000 new inhabitants each day.
Over one billion people world wide live in
slums

(statistics according to UN-HABITAT)

This means the 1
out of each six
people in the
world lives in a
slum.
Major slums around the world are found in
Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Kibera, and Jakarta.
55% of the population of Mumbai live in slums,
which cover only 6% of the city’s land.
 The Minister for Housing and Urban
Poverty Alleviation in India stated that
India’s slums population had risen from
27.9 million in 1981 to 61.8 million in
2001. The people who find work in the
rural areas find it too expensive to afford
housing so they build their own shelter.
Some of the reasons for
The rise in the slums is
due to:
1) the lack of affordable
housing.
2)And decaying economic
stats of people.
3) and the over load of
population.
4)The upraise of the
numbers of billionaires
in the world.
 Living conditions

Under capitalism the vast majority of these vast urban populations are
condemned to the most degrading conditions.
In the gargantuan Kibera, the
streets are unpaved, rubbish
strewn and potholed.
Hundreds of people might
share one small toilet block
and a couple of water
outlets. When it rains storm
water washes the
accumulated waste into the
water sources.
Internationally, 6,000 people
every day die from
preventable water-borne
diseases.
Fires tend to happen a lot in slums for example: The fire in
the Manila slum of Tondo injured scores of people, razed
2, 500 homes and rendered an estimated 25,030
residents homeless. It raged for seven hours before it
was extinguished, burning down 18 hectares of the 53
hectares of the former shipyard site where the slum has
mushroomed.

Manila slum
Workers spend more than 80% of their income
on food and with the decreasing quality of
food by contamination because of pollution
and unhygienic conditions. Dilapidated
infrastructure renders 30 percent of all
merchandise inedible. And the health stats
and mortality are badly effected by such
conditions.
• The lack of media coverage
concerning the UN’s revelations and
the worsening neglect to slums is
indicative of an international elite
mired in self-satisfaction and
concerned only with the immediate
pursuit of material gain.
 Causes that create and expand slums
• Slums sprout and continue for a combination
of demographic, social, economic, and
political reasons. Common causes include
rapid rural-to-urban migration, poor planning,
economic stagnation and depression, poverty,
high unemployment, informal economy,
colonialism and segregation, politics, natural
disasters and social conflicts.
Rural-urban migration
• Rural-urban migration is one of the causes attributed to the formation and expansion of slums. Since 1950, world
population has increased at a far greater rate than the total amount of arable land, even as agriculture contributes a
much smaller percentage of the total economy. For example, in India, agriculture accounted for 52% of its GDP in
1954 and only 19% in 2004; in Brazil, the 2005 GDP contribution of agriculture is one-fifth of its contribution in
1951. Agriculture, meanwhile, has also become higher yielding, less disease prone, less physically harsh and more
efficient with tractors and other equipment. The proportion of people working in agriculture has declined by 30%
over the last 50 years, while global population has increased by 250%.
• Many people move to urban areas primarily because cities promise more jobs, better schools for poor's children,
and diverse income opportunities than subsistence farming in rural areas. For example, in 1995, 95.8% of migrants
to Surabaya, Indonesia reported that jobs were their primary motivation for moving to the city. However, some rural
migrants may not find jobs immediately because of their lack of skills and the increasingly competitive job markets,
which leads to their financial shortage. Many cities, on the other hand, do not provide enough low-cost housing for
a large number of rural-urban migrant workers. Some rural-urbanmigrant workers cannot afford housing in cities
and eventually settle down in only affordable slums. Further, rural migrants, mainly lured by higher incomes,
continue to flood into cities. They thus expand the existing urban slums.
• According to Ali and Toran, social networks might also explain rural-urban migration and people's ultimate
settlement in slums. In addition to migration for jobs, a portion of people migrate to cities because of their
connection with relatives or families. Once their family support in urban areas is in slums, those rural migrants
intend to live with them in slums.
•
Urbanization
The formation of slums is closely linked to urbanization. In 2008,
more than 50% of the world’s population lived in urban areas. In
China, for example, it is estimated that the population living in
urban areas will increase by 10% within a decade according to its
current rates of urbanization. The UN-Habitat reports that 43% of
urban population in developing countries and 78% of those in the
least developed countries are slum dwellers.
• Some scholars suggest that urbanization creates slums because
local governments are unable to manage urbanization, and migrant
workers without an affordable place to live in, dwell in slums. Rapid
urbanization drives economic growth and causes people to seek
working and investment opportunities in urban areas. However, as
evidenced by poor urban infrastructure and insufficient housing,
the local governments sometimes are unable to manage this
transition. This incapacity can be attributed to insufficient funds
and inexperience to handle and organize problems brought by
migration and urbanization. In some cases, local governments
ignore the flux of immigrants during the process of
urbanization. Such examples can be found in
many African countries. In the early 1950s, many African
governments believed that slums would finally disappear with
economic growth in urban areas. They neglected rapidly spreading
slums due to increased rural-urban migration caused by
urbanization. Some governments, moreover, mapped the land
where slums occupied as undeveloped land.
• Another type of urbanization does not involve economic growth but economic stagnation or low
growth, mainly contributing to slum growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. This type of
urbanization involves a high rate of unemployment, insufficient financial resources and
inconsistent urban planning policy. In these areas, an increase of 1% in urban population will result in
an increase of 1.84% in slum prevalence.
• Urbanization might also force some people to live in slums when it influences land use by transforming
agricultural land into urban areas and increases land value. During the process of urbanization, some
agricultural land is used for additional urban activities. More investment will come into these areas,
which increases the land value. Before some land is completely urbanized, there is a period when the
land can be used for neither urban activities nor agriculture. The income from the land will decline,
which decreases the people’s incomes in that area.The gap between people’s low income and the high
land price forces some people to look for and construct cheap informal settlements, which are known
as slums in urban areas. The transformation of agricultural land also provides surplus labor, as
peasants have to seek jobs in urban areas as rural-urban migrant workers.
• Many slums are part of economies of agglomeration in which there is an emergence of economies of
scale at the firm level, transport costs and the mobility of the industrial labour force. The increase in
returns of scale will mean that the production of each good will take place in a single location. And
even though an agglomerated economy benefits these cities by bringing in specialization and multiple
competing suppliers, the conditions of slums continue to lag behind in terms of quality and adequate
housing. Alonso-Villar argues that the existence of transport costs implies that the best locations for a
firm will be those with easy access to markets, and the best locations for workers, those with easy
access to goods. The concentration is the result of a self-reinforcing process of
agglomeration. Concentration is a common trend of the distribution of population. Urban growth is
dramatically intense in the less developed countries, where a large number of huge cities have started
to appear; which means high poverty rates, crime, pollution and congestion.
 Poor housing planning
• Lack of affordable low cost housing and poor planning encourages the supply side of
slums. The Millennium Development Goals proposes that member nations should make a
“significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers” by 2020. If
member nations succeed in achieving this goal, 90% of the world total slum dwellers may
remain in the poorly housed settlements by 2020. Choguill claims that the large number of
slum dwellers indicates a deficiency of practical housing policy. Whenever there is a
significant gap in growing demand for housing and insufficient supply of affordable housing,
this gap is typically met in part by slums. The Economist summarizes this as, "good housing is
obviously better than a slum, but a slum is better than none".
• Insufficient financial resources and lack of coordination in government bureaucracy are two
main causes of poor housing planning. Financial deficiency in some governments may explain
the lack of affordable public housing for the poor since any improvement of the tenant in
slums and expansion of public housing programs involve a great increase in the government
expenditure. The problem can also lie on the failure in coordination among different
departments in charge of economic development, urban planning, and land allocation. In
some cities, governments assume that the housing market will adjust the supply of housing
with a change in demand. However, with little economic incentive, the housing market is
more likely to develop middle-income housing rather than low-cost housing. The urban poor
gradually become marginalized in the housing market where few houses are built to sell to
them.
 Colonialism and segregation
• Some of the slums in today’s world are a product of urbanization brought bycolonialism. For instance,
the Europeans arrived in Kenya in the nineteenth century and created urban centers such
as Nairobi mainly to serve their financial interests. They regarded the Africans as temporary migrants and
needed them only for supply of labor. The housing policy aiming to accommodate these workers was not
well enforced and the government built settlements in the form of single-occupancy bedspaces. Due to
the cost of time and money in their movement back and forth between rural and urban areas, their
families gradually migrated to the urban centre. As they could not afford to buy houses, slums were thus
formed.
• Others were created because of segregation imposed by the colonialists. For example, Dharavi slum of
Mumbai – now one of the largest slums in India, used to be a village referred to as Koliwadas, and Mumbai
used to be referred as Bombay. In 1887, the British colonial government expelled all tanneries, other
noxious industry and poor natives who worked in the peninsular part of the city and colonial housing area,
to what was back then the northern fringe of the city – a settlement now called Dharavi.This settlement
attracted no colonial supervision or investment in terms of road infrastructure, sanitation, public services
or housing. The poor moved into Dharavi, found work as servants in colonial offices and homes and in the
foreign owned tanneries and other polluting industries near Dharavi. To live, the poor built shanty towns
within easy commute to work. By 1947, the year India became an independent nation of the
commonwealth, Dharavi had blossomed into Bombay’s largest slum.
• Similarly, some of the slums of Lagos, Nigeria sprouted because of neglect and policies of the colonial
era. During apartheid era of South Africa, under the pretext of sanitation and plague epidemic prevention,
racial and ethnic group segregation was pursued, people of color were moved to the fringes of the city,
policies that created Soweto and other slums – officially called townships. Large slums started at the
fringes of segregation-conscious colonial city centers of Latin America. [Marcuse suggests ghettoes in
the United States, and elsewhere, have been created and maintained by the segregationist policies of the
state and regionally dominant group.[
 Poor infrastructure, social exclusion
and economic stagnation
• Social exclusion and poor infrastructure forces the poor to adapt to conditions
beyond his or her control. Poor families that cannot afford transportation, or those
who simply lack any form of affordable public transportation, generally end up in
squat settlements within walking distance or close enough to the place of their
formal or informal employment. Ben Arimah cites this social exclusion and poor
infrastructure as a cause for numerous slums in African cities. Poor quality,
unpaved streets encourage slums; a 1% increase in paved all-season roads, claims
Arimah, reduces slum incidence rate by about 0.35%. Affordable public transport
and economic infrastructure empowers poor people to move and consider housing
options other than their current slums.
• A growing economy that creates jobs at rate faster than population growth, offers
people opportunities and incentive to relocate from poor slum to more developed
neighborhoods. Economic stagnation, in contrast, creates uncertainties and risks
for the poor, encouraging people to stay in the slums. Economic stagnation in a
nation with a growing population reduces per capita disposal income in urban and
rural areas, increasing urban and rural poverty. Rising rural poverty also
encourages migration to urban areas. A poorly performing economy, in other
words, increases poverty and rural-to-urban migration, thereby increasing slums.
 Informal economy
• Many slums grow because of growing informal economy which creates demand for workers.
Informal economy is that part of an economy that is neither registered as a business nor licensed,
one that does not pay taxes and is not monitored by local or state or federal government. Informal
economy grows faster than formal economy when government laws and regulations are opaque
and excessive, government bureaucracy is corrupt and abusive of entrepreneurs, labor laws are
inflexible, or when law enforcement is poor.Urban informal sector is between 20 to 60% of most
developing economies’ GDP; in Kenya, 78 per cent of non-agricultural employment is in the
informal sector making up 42 per cent of GDP. In many cities the informal sector accounts for as
much as 60 per cent of employment of the urban population. For example, in Benin, slum dwellers
comprise 75 per cent of informal sector workers, while in Burkina Faso, the Central African
Republic, Chad and Ethiopia, they make up 90 per cent of the informal labour force. Slums thus
create an informal alternate economic ecosystem, that demands low paid flexible workers,
something impoverished residents of slums deliver. In other words, countries where starting,
registering and running a formal business is difficult, tend to encourage informal businesses and
slums. Without a sustainable formal economy that raise incomes and create opportunities, squalid
slums are likely to continue.
• A slum near Ramos Arizpe in Mexico.
• The World Bank and UN Habitat estimate, assuming no major economic reforms are undertaken,
more than 80% of additional jobs in urban areas of developing world may be low-paying jobs in the
informal sector. Everything else remaining same, this explosive growth in the informal sector is
likely to be accompanied by a rapid growth of slums.
 Poverty
• Urban poverty encourages the formation
and demand for slums. With rapid shift
from rural to urban life, poverty migrates
to urban areas. The urban poor arrives
with hope, and very little of anything else.
He or she typically has no access to
shelter, basic urban services and social
amenities. Slums are often the only option
for the urban poor.
Politics
• Many local and national governments have, for political
interests, subverted efforts to remove, reduce or upgrade
slums into better housing options for the poor. Throughout
the second half of the 19th century, for example, French
political parties relied on votes from slum population and
had vested interests in maintaining that voting block.
Removal and replacement of slum created a conflict of
interest, and politics prevented efforts to remove, relocate
or upgrade the slums into housing projects that are better
than the slums. Similar dynamics are cited in favelas of
Brazil, slums of India,and shanty towns of Kenya.
• The location of 30 largest "contiguous" mega-slums in the
world. Numerous other regions have slums, but those slums
are scattered. The numbers show population in millions per
mega-slum, the initials are derived from city name. Some of
the largest slums of the world are in areas of political or
social conflicts.
• Scholars claim politics also drives rural-urban migration and
subsequent settlement patterns. Pre-existing patronage
networks, sometimes in the form of gangs and other times
in the form of political parties or social activists, inside slums
seek to maintain their economic, social and political power.
These social and political groups have vested interests to
encourage migration by ethnic groups that will help
maintain the slums, and reject alternate housing options
even if the alternate options are better in every aspect than
the slums they seek to replace.
 Social conflicts
• Millions of Lebanese people formed slums
during the civil war from 1975 to
1990. Similarly, in recent years, numerous
slums have sprung around Kabul to
accommodate rural Afghans escaping Taliban
violence.
 Natural disasters
• Major natural disasters in poor nations often lead
to migration of disaster-affected families from
areas crippled by the disaster to unaffected areas,
the creation of temporary tent city and slums, or
expansion of existing slums. These slums tend to
become permanent because the residents do not
want to leave, as in the case of slums near Port-
au-Prince after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and
slums near Dhaka after 2007 Bangladesh Cyclone
Sidr.