Product Code Database
A slum is a highly populated Urban area residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inhabited by impoverished people. "What are slums and why do they exist?" UN-Habitat, Kenya (April 2007) The world's largest slum is Orangi, in Karachi, Pakistan.Mike Davis, Planet of Slums «, La Découverte, Paris, 2006 ()Daniel Tovrov (December 9, 2011). "5 Biggest Slums in the World". , International Business Times.Craig Glenday, editor. Guinness World Records. 2013. Bantam. . Page 277.
Although slums are usually located in , in some countries they can be located in where housing quality is low and living conditions are poor. While slums differ in size and other characteristics, most lack reliable sanitation services, Water supply, reliable electricity, law enforcement, and other basic services. Slum residences vary from shanty town houses to professionally built dwellings which, because of poor-quality construction or lack of basic maintenance, have deteriorated. UN-Habitat 2007 Press Release on its report, "The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003".
Due to increasing urbanization of the general populace, slums became common in the 19th to late 20th centuries in the United States and Europe.Lawrence Vale (2007), From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors, Harvard University Press, Slums are still predominantly found in urban regions of developing countries, but are also still found in developed economies. "Slums: Past, Present and Future" United Nations Habitat (2007) "The challenge of slums – Global report on Human Settlements", United Nations Habitat (2003)
Slums form and grow in different parts of the world for many different reasons. Causes include rapid Rural flight, economic stagnation and depression, high unemployment, poverty, informal economy, forced or manipulated ghettoization, poor planning, politics, natural disasters, and social conflicts.Patton, C. (1988). Spontaneous shelter: International perspectives and prospects. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Strategies tried to reduce and transform slums in different countries, with varying degrees of success, include a combination of slum removal, slum relocation, slum upgrading, urban planning with citywide infrastructure development, and public housing.Mona Serageldin, Elda Solloso, and Luis Valenzuela (March 2006). "Local Government Actions to Reduce Poverty and Achieve The Millennium Development Goals" . Global Urban Development Magazine, Vol 2, Issue 1.
.... informal settlements lacking one or more of the following conditions: access to improved water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area, housing durability, and security of tenure
Numerous other non-English terms are often used interchangeably with slum: shanty town, favela, rookery, gecekondu, skid row, barrio, ghetto, banlieue, bidonville, taudis, bandas de miseria, barrio marginal, morro, paragkoupoli, loteamento, barraca, musseque, iskuwater, inner city, tugurio, solares, mudun safi, kawasan kumuh, karyan, medina achouaia, brarek, ishash, galoos, tanake, baladi, trushchoby, chalis, katras, zopadpattis, ftohogeitonia, basti, estero, looban, dagatan, umjondolo, watta, udukku, and chereka bete. Slums of the World: The Face of Urban Poverty in the New Millennium? , UN-Habitat; page 30.
The word slum has negative connotations, and using this label for an area can be seen as an attempt to delegitimize that land use when hoping to repurpose it.
Slums were common in the United States and Europe before the early 20th century. London's East End is generally considered the locale where the term originated in the 19th century, where massive and rapid urbanization of the dockside and industrial areas led to intensive overcrowding in a warren of post-medieval streetscape. The suffering of the poor was described in popular fiction by moralist authors such as Charles Dickens – most famously Oliver Twist (1837–1839) and echoed the Christian Socialist values of the time, which soon found legal expression in the Public Health Act 1848. As the slum clearance movement gathered pace, deprived areas such as Old Nichol were fictionalised to raise awareness in the middle classes in the form of moralist novels such as A Child of the Jago (1896) resulting in slum clearance and reconstruction programmes such as the Boundary Estate (1893-1900) and the creation of charitable trusts such as the Peabody Trust founded in 1862 and Joseph Rowntree Foundation (1904) which still operate to provide decent housing today.
Slums are often associated with the British Isles during the Victorian era, particularly in industrial towns. Friedrich Engels described these neighborhoods as "cattle-sheds for human beings".Mike Pitts (August 27, 2009). "Unearthing Manchester's Victorian slums" The Guardian. These were generally still inhabited until the 1940s, when the British government started urban renewal and built new . "The History of Council Housing" University of the West of England, Bristol (2008) There are still examples left of slum housing in the UK, but many have been removed by government initiative, redesigned and replaced with better public housing. In Europe, slums were common.Eckstein, Susan. 1990. "Urbanization Revisited: Inner-City Slum of Hope and Squatter Settlement of Despair". World Development 18: 165–181Roger W. Caves, editor (2005). Encyclopedia of the City. . page 410; also see "Slum", Encyclopædia Britannica (2001). By the 1920s it had become a common slang expression in England, meaning either various taverns and eating houses, "loose talk" or gypsy language, or a room with "low going-ons". In Life in London (1821) Pierce Egan used the word in the context of the "back slums" of Holy Lane or St Giles. A footnote defined slum to mean "low, unfrequent parts of the town". Charles Dickens used the word slum in a similar way in 1840, writing "I mean to take a great, London, back-slum kind walk tonight". Slum began to be used to describe bad housing soon after and was used as alternative expression for rookeries. In 1850 the Catholic Cardinal Wiseman described the area known as Devil's Acre in Westminster, London as follows:
Close under the Abbey of Westminster there lie concealed labyrinths of lanes and potty and alleys and slums, nests of ignorance, vice, depravity, and crime, as well as of squalor, wretchedness, and disease; whose atmosphere is typhus, whose ventilation is cholera; in which swarms of huge and almost countless population, nominally at least, Catholic; haunts of filth, which no sewage committee can reach – dark corners, which no lighting board can brighten.
This passage was widely quoted in the national press, leading to the popularization of the word slum to describe bad housing.
In France as in most industrialised European capitals, slums were widespread in Paris and other urban areas in the 19th century, many of which continued through first half of the 20th century. The first cholera epidemic of 1832 triggered a political debate, and Louis René Villermé studyNancy Krieger (2001). "Historical roots of social epidemiology". International Journal of Epidemiology. 30 (4): 899–900 of various of Paris demonstrated the differences and connection between slums, poverty and poor health.Ann-Louise Shapiro (1985), Housing the Poor of Paris, 1850–1902, Melun Law first passed in 1849 and revised in 1851, followed by establishment of Paris Commission on Unhealthful Dwellings in 1852 began the social process of identifying the worst housing inside slums, but did not remove or replace slums. After World War II, French people started mass migration from rural to urban areas of France. This demographic and economic trend rapidly raised rents of existing housing as well as expanded slums. French government passed laws to block increase in the rent of housing, which inadvertently made many housing projects unprofitable and increased slums. In 1950, France launched its HLM "10 idées reçues sur les HLM" , Union sociale pour l'habitat, February 2012 France – public housing European Union initiative to finance and build public housing and remove slums, managed by techniciens – urban technocrats., "Ordering the Disorderly Slum – Standardizing Quality of Life in Marseille Tenements and Bidonvilles" Minayo Nasiali, Journal of Urban History November 2012 vol. 38 no. 6, 1021–1035 and financed by Livret A "Livret A rate falls to 1.25%" The Connexion (July 18, 2013) – a tax free savings account for French public. Some slums remain in the early 21st century in France, most of which are dismantled after a few months, the largest being the "Petite Ceinture" slum on the northern Paris decommissioned train tracks.
New York City is believed to have created the United States' first slum, named the Five Points in 1825, as it evolved into a large urban settlement.Kevin Baker (September 30, 2001). "The First Slum in America" . The New York Times. Five Points was named for a lake named Collect.Solis, Julia. New York Underground: The Anatomy of a City. p. 76 which, by the late 1700s, was surrounded by slaughterhouses and tanneries which emptied their waste directly into its waters. Trash piled up as well and by the early 1800s the lake was filled up and dry. On this foundation was built Five Points, the United States' first slum. Five Points was occupied by successive waves of freed slaves, Irish, then Italian, then Chinese, immigrants. It housed the poor, rural people leaving farms for opportunity, and the persecuted people from Europe pouring into New York City. Bars, bordellos, squalid and lightless tenements lined its streets. Violence and crime were commonplace. Politicians and social elite discussed it with derision. Slums like Five Points triggered discussions of affordable housing and slum removal. As of the start of the 21st century, Five Points slum had been transformed into the Little Italy and Chinatown neighborhoods of New York City, through that city's campaign of massive urban renewal.
Five Points was not the only slum in America.Suttles, Gerald D. 1968. The Social Order of the Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago PressGans, Herbert J. 1962. The Urban Villagers. New York: The Free Press. Jacob Riis, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine and others photographed many before World War II. Slums were found in every major urban region of the United States throughout most of the 20th century, long after the Great Depression. Most of these slums had been ignored by the cities and states which encompassed them until the 1960s' War on Poverty was undertaken by the Federal government of the United States.
A type of slum housing, sometimes called poorhouses, crowded Boston Common, later at the fringes of the city. "History of US Public Housing" Affordable Housing Institute, United States (2008); See Part 1, 2 and 3
Rio de Janeiro documented its first slum in 1920 census. By the 1960s, over 33% of population of Rio lived in slums, 45% of Mexico City and Ankara, 65% of Algiers, 35% of Caracas, 25% of Lima and Santiago, 15% of Singapore. By 1980, in various cities and towns of Latin America alone, there were about 25,000 slums.Janice Perlman (1980). The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. University of California Press. . pages 12–16.
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.Judy Baker (2008). "Urban Poverty – An Overview". The World Bank. For example, in 1995, 95.8% of migrants to Surabaya, Indonesia reported that jobs were their primary motivation for moving to the city.Tjiptoherijanto, Prinjono, and Eddy Hasmi. "Urbanization and Urban Growth in Indonesia". Asian Urbanization in the New Millennium. Ed. Gayl D. Ness and Prem P. Talwar. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2005., page 162 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–urban migrant 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
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 labour, 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.
Insufficient financial resources and lack of coordination in government bureaucracy are two main causes of poor house 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.
Others were created because of segregation imposed by the colonialists. For example, Dharavi – 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.Jan Nijman (February 2010). "A Study of Space in Mumbai's Slums". Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie. Volume 101, Issue 1, pages 4–17.
Similarly, some of the slums of Lagos, Nigeria sprouted because of neglect and policies of the colonial era.Liora Bigon, "Between Local and Colonial Perceptions: The History of Slum Clearances in Lagos" (Nigeria), 1924–1960, African and Asian Studies, Volume 7, Number 1, 2008, pages 49–76 (28) During apartheid era of South Africa, under the pretext of sanitation and plague epidemic prevention, racial and ethnic group segregation was pursued, people of colour were moved to the fringes of the city, policies that created Soweto and other slums – officially called townships.Beinart, W., & Dubow, S. (Eds.), (2013), Segregation and apartheid in twentieth century South Africa, Routledge, pages 25–35 Large slums started at the fringes of segregation-conscious colonial city centers of Latin America.Griffin, E., and Ford, L. (1980). "A model of Latin American city structure". Geographical Review. pages 397–422. 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.Marcuse, Peter (2001), "Enclaves yes, ghettoes, no: Segregation and the state" , Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Conference Paper, Columbia UniversityBauman, John F (1987). Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920–1974. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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. "The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements" (2003) , United Nations Human Settlements Programme; "Growing out of poverty: Urban job Creation and the Millennium Development Goals" Marja Kuiper and Kees van der Ree, Global Urban Development Magazine, Vol 2, Issue 1, March 2006
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.
For example, it was recently proved that in a small favela in the northeast of Brazil (Favela Sururu de Capote), the migration of dismissed sugar cane factory workers to the city of Maceió (who initiated the self-construction of the favela), has been driven by the necessity to find a job in the city. The same observation was noticed on the new migrants who contribute to the consolidation and growth of the slum. Also, the choice of the terrain for the construction of the favela (the margins of a lagoon) followed the rationale that it could offer conditions to provide them means of work. Circa 80% of residents living in that community live from the fishery of a mussel which divides the community through gender and age. Alleys and houses were planned to facilitate the working activities, that provided subsistence and livelihood to the community. When resettled, the main reason of changes of formal housing units was due to the lack of possibilities to perform their work in the new houses designed according to formal architecture principles, or even by the distances they had to travel to work in the slum where they originally lived, which was in turn faced by residents by self-constructing spaces to shelter the work originally performed in the slum, in the formal housing units. Similar observations were made in other slums. Residents also reported that their work constitutes their dignity, citizenship, and self-esteem in the underprivileged settings in which they live. The reflection of this recent research was possible due to participatory observations and the fact that the author of the research has lived in a slum to verify the socioeconomic practices which were prone to shape, plan and govern space in slums.
ScholarsGerald Suttles (1970). The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City. . University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1. 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.Ahsan Ullah (2002). "Bright City Lights and Slums of Dhaka city" City University of Hong Kong.
At their start, slums are typically located in the least desirable lands near the town or city, that are state owned, are part of a philanthropic trust, possessed by a religious entity, or have no clear land title. In cities located in mountainous terrain, slums begin on difficult to reach slopes or start at the bottom of flood prone valleys, often hidden from the plain view of downtown but close to some natural water source. In cities located near lagoons, marshlands and rivers, they start on banks or on stilts above water or the dry river bed; in flat terrain, slums begin on lands unsuitable for agriculture, near city trash dumps, next to railway tracks,Banerji, M. (2009), "Provision of basic services in the slums and resettlement colonies of Delhi", Institute of Social Studies Trust and other shunned undesirable locations.
These strategies shield slums from the risk of being noticed and removed when they are small and most vulnerable to local government officials. Initial homes tend to be tents and shacks that are quick to install, but as a slum grows, becomes established and newcomers pay the informal association or gang for the right to live in the slum, the construction materials for the slums switches to more durable materials such as bricks and concrete, suitable for slum's topography.Lloyd, P. (1979), Slums of Hope: shanty towns of the Third World, Manchester University Press, McAuslan, Patrick. (1986). Les mal logés du Tiers-Monde. Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan
The original slums, over time, get established next to centers of economic activity, schools, hospitals, and sources of employment, which the poor rely on. Established old slums, surrounded by the formal city infrastructure, cannot expand horizontally; therefore, they grow vertically by stacking additional rooms, sometimes for a growing family and sometimes as a source of rent from new arrivals in slums.Centre des Nations Unies pour les Etablissements Humains (CNUEH). (1981). "Amélioration physique des taudis et des bidonvilles" , Nairobi Some slums name themselves after founders of political parties, locally respected historical figures, current politicians or a politician's spouse to garner political backing against eviction.Gilbert, Daniel (1990), Barriada Haute-Espérance : Récit d'une coopération au Pérou. Paris: Éditions Karthala
Secure land tenure is important for slum dwellers as an authentic recognition of their residential status in urban areas. It also encourages them to upgrade their housing facilities, which will give them protection against natural and unnatural hazards. Undocumented ownership with no legal title to the land also prevents slum settlers from applying for mortgage, which might worsen their financial situations. In addition, without registration of the land ownership, the government has difficulty in upgrading basic facilities and improving the living environment. Insecure tenure of the slum, as well as a lack of socially and politically acceptable alternatives to slums, also creates difficulty in citywide infrastructure development such as rapid mass transit, electrical and sewer pipe layout, highways and roads.Ravetz, A. (2013). The government of space: town planning in modern society. Routledge.
Overcrowding is another characteristic of slums. Many dwellings are single room units, with high occupancy rates. Each dwelling may be cohabited by multiple families. Five and more persons may share a one-room unit; the room is used for cooking, sleeping and living. Overcrowding is also seen near sources of drinking water, cleaning, and sanitation where one toilet may serve dozens of families.Wohl, A. S. (1977). The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian (Vol. 5). Transaction Books. In a slum of Kolkata, India, over 10 people sometimes share a 45 m2 room.Kundu N (2003) "Urban slum reports: The case of Kolkata, India". Nairobi: United Nations. In Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, population density is estimated at 2,000 people per hectare — or about 500,000 people in one square mile. "Integrated Water Sanitation and Waste Management in Kibera" United Nations (2008)
However, the density and neighbourhood effects of slum populations may also offer an opportunity to target health interventions.
Slums often have very narrow alleys that do not allow vehicles (including emergency vehicles) to pass. The lack of services such as routine Waste collection allows rubbish to accumulate in huge quantities. The lack of infrastructure is caused by the informal nature of settlement and no planning for the poor by government officials. Fires are often a serious problem.Matt Birkinshaw, Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA (August 2008). "Big Devil in the Jondolos: The Politics of Shack Fires".
In many countries, local and national government often refuse to recognize slums, because the slum are on disputed land, or because of the fear that quick official recognition will encourage more slum formation and seizure of land illegally. Recognizing and notifying slums often triggers a creation of property rights, and requires that the government provide public services and infrastructure to the slum residents. With poverty and informal economy, slums do not generate tax revenues for the government and therefore tend to get minimal or slow attention. In other cases, the narrow and haphazard layout of slum streets, houses and substandard shacks, along with persistent threat of crime and violence against infrastructure workers, makes it difficult to layout reliable, safe, cost effective and efficient infrastructure. In yet others, the demand far exceeds the government bureaucracy's ability to deliver.
Low socioeconomic status of its residents is another common characteristic attributed to slum residents.
Some slums risk man-made hazards such as toxic industries, traffic congestion and collapsing infrastructure. Fires are another major risk to slums and its inhabitants, with streets often too narrow to allow proper and quick access to fire control trucks.
Examples of licit informal economy include street vending, household enterprises, product assembly and packaging, making garlands and embroideries, domestic work, shoe polishing or repair, driving Auto rickshaw or manual rickshaws, construction workers or manually driven logistics, and handicrafts production. "Taj Ganj Slum Housing" , Cities Alliance (2012) "The hidden role of informal economy" Ulla Heinonen, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland (2008); In some slums, people sort and recycle trash of different kinds (from household garbage to electronics) for a living – selling either the odd usable goods or stripping broken goods for parts or raw materials. Typically these licit informal economies require the poor to regularly pay a bribe to local police and government officials. "The case of Karachi, Pakistan" Urban Slum Reports, A series on Slums of the World (2011). page 13.
Examples of illicit informal economy include illegal substance and weapons trafficking, drug or moonshine/changaa production, prostitution and gambling – all sources of risks to the individual, families and society. "Uganda: slum areas, posh pubs biggest drug hubs" All Africa News (January 7, 2013)Larry Whiteaker (1997), Seduction, Prostitution, and Moral Reform in New York, 1830–1860, , page 29. Recent reports reflecting illicit informal economies include drug trade and distribution in Brazil's favelas, production of fake goods in the colonías of Tijuana, smuggling in katchi abadis and slums of Karachi, or production of synthetic drugs in the townships of Johannesburg.Vanda Felbab-Brown, "Bringing the State to the Slum: Confronting Organized Crime and Urban Violence in Latin America – Lessons for Law Enforcement and Policymakers" Brookings Institution (December 2011)
The slum-dwellers in informal economies run many risks. The informal sector, by its very nature, means income insecurity and lack of social mobility. There is also absence of legal contracts, protection of labour rights, regulations and bargaining power in informal employments.
On the other hand, while UN-Habitat reports some slums are more exposed to crimes with higher crime rates (for instance, the traditional inner-city slums), crime is not the direct resultant of block layout in many slums. Rather crime is one of the symptoms of slum dwelling; thus slums consist of more victims than criminals. Consequently, slums do not always have consistently high crime rates, as the worst crime rates exist in sectors maintaining influence of illicit economy—such as drug trafficking, brewing, prostitution, and gambling. Often in such circumstances, multiple gangs fight for control over revenue. Global: Urban conflict – fighting for resources in the slums IRIN, United Nations News Service (October 8, 2007)Josephine Slater (2009), "Naked Cities - Struggle in the Global Slums", Mute, Volume 2, Issue 3, ISBN 0-9550664-3-3
Slum crime rate correlates with insufficient law enforcement and inadequate public policing. In main cities of developing countries, law enforcement lags behind urban growth and slum expansion. Often police can not reduce crime because, due to ineffective city planning and governance, slums set inefficient crime prevention system. Such problems is not primarily due to community indifference. Leads and information intelligence from slums are rare, streets are narrow and a potential death traps to patrol, and many in the slum community have an inherent distrust of authorities from fear ranging from eviction to collection on unpaid utility bills to general law and order. "Bringing the State to the Slum: Confronting Organized Crime and Urban Violence in Latin America" Vanda Felbab-Brown (2011), Brookings Institution Lack of formal recognition by the governments also leads to few formal policing and public justice institutions in slums.
Women in slums are at greater risk of physical and sexual violence. Factors such as unemployment that lead to insufficient resources in the household can increase marital stress and therefore exacerbate domestic violence.
Slums are often non-secured areas and women often risk sexual violence when they walk alone in slums late at night. Violence against women and women's security in slums emerge as recurrent issues. (2025). 9789295004429, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE). ISBN 9789295004429
Another prevalent form of violence in slums is armed violence (gun violence), mostly existing in African and Latin American slums. It leads to homicide and the emergence of criminal gangs. Typical victims are male slum residents. "More Slums Equals More Violence" Robert Muggah and Anna Alvazzi del Frate, Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development & UNDP (October 2007) Violence often leads to retaliatory and vigilante violence within the slum. Gang and drug wars are endemic in some slums, predominantly between male residents of slums. The police sometimes participate in gender-based violence against men as well by picking up some men, beating them and putting them in jail. Domestic violence against men also exists in slums, including verbal abuses and even physical violence from households.
Cohen as well as Merton theorized that the cycle of slum violence does not mean slums are inevitably criminogenic, rather in some cases it is frustration against life in slum, and a consequence of denial of opportunity to slum residents to leave the slum.S Cohen (1971), Images of deviance, Harmondsworth, UK, Penguin Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences, J. Robert Lilly, Francis T. Cullen, Richard A. Ball (2010), 5th Edition, SAGE, , pages 41–69
Factors that have been attributed to a higher rate of disease transmission in slums include high population densities, poor living conditions, low vaccination rates, insufficient health-related data and inadequate health service. Overcrowding leads to faster and wider spread of diseases due to the limited space in slum housing. Poor living conditions also make slum dwellers more vulnerable to certain diseases. Poor water quality, a manifest example, is a cause of many major illnesses including malaria, diarrhea and trachoma. Improving living conditions such as introduction of better sanitation and access to basic facilities can ameliorate the effects of diseases, such as cholera.
Slums have been historically linked to epidemics, and this trend has continued in modern times.Reiter, P., & Goh, K. T. (1998), "Dengue control in Singapore", Dengue in Singapore, pp. 213-242, For example, the slums of West African nations such as Liberia were crippled by as well as contributed to the outbreak and spread of Ebola in 2014. "In a Liberian slum swarming with Ebola, a race against time to save two little girls" The Washington Post "Liberian Slum Takes Ebola Treatment Into Its Own Hands" The Wall Street Journal Slums are considered a major public health concern and potential breeding grounds of drug resistant diseases for the entire city, the nation, as well as the global community.Thomas Quinn and John Bartlett, (2010), "Global infectious diseases and urbanization", Urban Health: Global Perspectives, 18, 105;
The major nutritional problems in slums are protein-energy malnutrition (PEM), vitamin A deficiency (VAD), iron deficiency anemia (IDA) and iodine deficiency disorders (IDD). Malnutrition can sometimes lead to death among children. Dr. Abhay Bang's report shows that malnutrition kills 56,000 children annually in urban slums in India.
Widespread child malnutrition in slums is closely related to family income, mothers' food practice, mothers' educational level, and maternal employment or housewifery. Poverty may result in inadequate food intake when people cannot afford to buy and store enough food, which leads to malnutrition. Another common cause is mothers' faulty feeding practices, including inadequate breastfeeding and wrongly preparation of food for children. Tada et al.'s study in Bangkok slums shows that around 64% of the mothers sometimes fed their children instant food instead of a normal meal. And about 70% of the mothers did not provide their children three meals every day. Mothers' lack of education leads to their faulty feeding practices. Many mothers in slums don't have knowledge on food nutrition for children. Maternal employment also influences children's nutritional status. For the mothers who work outside, their children are prone to be malnourished. These children are likely to be neglected by their mothers or sometimes not carefully looked after by their female relatives.
Lack of reliable data also has a negative impact on slum dwellers' health. A number of slum families do not report cases or seek professional medical care, which results in insufficient data. This might prevent appropriate allocation of health care resources in slum areas since many countries base their health care plans on data from clinic, hospital, or national mortality registry. Moreover, health service is insufficient or inadequate in most of the world's slums. Emergency ambulance service and urgent care services are typically unavailable, as health service providers sometimes avoid servicing slums. A study shows that more than half of slum dwellers are prone to visit private practitioners or seek self-medication with medicines available in the home. Private practitioners in slums are usually those who are unlicensed or poorly trained and they run clinics and pharmacies mainly for the sake of money. The categorization of slum health by the government and census data also has an effect on the distribution and allocation of health resources in inner city areas. A significant portion of city populations face challenges with access to health care but do not live in locations that are described as within the "slum" area.
Overall, a complex network of physical, social, and environmental factors contribute to the health threats faced by slum residents.
Some NGO's are focused at addressing local problems (i.e. sanitation issues, health, ...), through the out of the slums and its health services, "Slummapping". creation of , creation of local food production projects, and even microcredit projects. In one project (in Rio de Janeiro), the government even Employment slum residents for the reforestation of a nearby location.
To achieve the goal of "cities without slums", the UN claims that governments must undertake vigorous urban planning, city management, infrastructure development, slum upgrading and poverty reduction.
Critics argue that slum removal by force tend to ignore the social problems that cause slums. The poor children as well as working adults of a city's informal economy need a place to live. Slum clearance removes the slum, but it does not remove the causes that create and maintain the slum. Policymakers, urban planners, and politicians need to take the factors that cause people to live in informal housing into consideration while tackling the issue of slums.
This strategy ignores several dimensions of a slum life. The strategy sees slum as merely a place where the poor lives. In reality, slums are often integrated with every aspect of a slum resident's life, including sources of employment, distance from work, and social life. Slum relocation that displaces the poor from opportunities to earn a livelihood, generates economic insecurity in the poor. "Upgrading Urban Communities" , The World Bank, MIT (2009) In some cases, the slum residents oppose relocation even if the replacement land and housing to the outskirts of cities is of better quality than their current house. Examples include Zone One Tondo Organization of Manila, Philippines, and Abahlali base Mjondolo of Durban, South Africa.Ton Van Naerssen, "Squatter Access to Land in Metro Manila", Philippine Studies vol. 41, no. 1 (1993) pages 3–20. In other cases, such as Ennakhil slum relocation project in Morocco, systematic social mediation has worked. The slum residents have been convinced that their current location is a health hazard, prone to natural disaster, or that the alternative location is well connected to employment opportunities.
In Mexico City for example, the government attempted to upgrade and urbanize settled slums in the periphery during the 1970s and 1980s by including basic amenities such as concrete roads, parks, illumination and sewage. Currently, most slums in Mexico City face basic characteristics of traditional slums, characterized to some extent in housing, population density, crime and poverty, however, the vast majority of its inhabitants have access to basic amenities and most areas are connected to major roads and completely urbanized. Nevertheless, smaller settlements lacking these can still be found in the periphery of the city and its inhabitants are known as "paracaidistas". A more recent example of slum-upgrading approach is PRIMED initiative in Medellin, Colombia, where streets, Metrocable transportation and other public infrastructure has been added. These slum infrastructure upgrades were combined with city infrastructure upgrade such as addition of metro, paved roads and highways to empower all city residents including the poor with reliable access throughout city.Fernando Patino, Urban Safety through Slum Upgrading United Nations Habitat (2011); . pages 7–19.
Most slum upgrading projects, however, have produced mixed results. While initial evaluations were promising and success stories widely reported by media, evaluations done 5 to 10 years after a project completion have been disappointing. Herbert Werlin notes that the initial benefits of slum upgrading efforts have been ephemeral. The slum upgrading projects in kampungs of Jakarta, Indonesia, for example, looked promising in first few years after upgrade, but thereafter returned to a condition worse than before, particularly in terms of sanitation, environmental problems and safety of drinking water. Communal toilets provided under slum upgrading effort were poorly maintained, and abandoned by slum residents of Jakarta. World Bank Experience with the Provision of Infrastructure Services for the Urban Poor Christine Kessides] The World Bank (1997) Similarly slum upgrading efforts in Philippines,Luna, E. M., Ferrer, O. P. and Ignacio, Jr., U. (1994) "Participatory Action Planning for the Development of Two PSF Projects". Manila: University of PhilippinesBartone, C., Bernstein, J., Leitmann, J. and Eigen, J. (1994) Toward Environmental Strategies for Cities. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. IndiaBannerjee, T. and Chakrovorty, S. (1994) "Transfer of planning technology and local political economy: a retrospective analysis of Calcutta", Journal of the American Planning Association, 60, pages 71–82 and BrazilSmolka, M (2003), "Informality, urban poverty, and land market prices". Land Lines 15(1). have proven to be excessively more expensive than initially estimated, and the condition of the slums 10 years after completion of slum upgrading has been slum like. The anticipated benefits of slum upgrading, claims Werlin, have proven to be a myth. There is limited but consistent evidence that slums upgrading may prevent diarrhoeal diseases and water-related expenditure.
Slum upgrading is largely a government controlled, funded and run process, rather than a competitive market driven process. Krueckeberg and Paulsen note "Urban Land Tenure Policies in Brazil, South Africa, and India: an Assessment of the Issues" Donald A. Krueckeberg and Kurt G. Paulsen (2000), Lincoln Institute, Rutgers University conflicting politics, government corruption and street violence in slum regularization process is part of the reality. Slum upgrading and tenure regularization also upgrade and regularize the slum bosses and political agendas, while threatening the influence and power of municipal officials and ministries. Slum upgrading does not address poverty, low paying jobs from informal economy, and other characteristics of slums. Recent research shows that the lack of these options make residents to undertake measures to assure their working needs. One example in the northeast of Brazil, Vila S. Pedro, was mischaracterized by informal self-constructions by residents to restore working opportunities originally employed in the informal settlement. It is unclear whether slum upgrading can lead to long-term sustainable improvement to slums.Marie Huchzermeyer and Aly Karam, Informal settlements: A perpetual challenge? Cape Town, South Africa: University of Cape Town Press.
As cities expanded and business parks scattered due to cost ineffectiveness, people moved to live in the suburbs; thus retail, logistics, house maintenance and other businesses followed demand patterns. City governments used infrastructure investments and urban planning to distribute work, housing, green areas, retail, schools and population densities. Affordable public mass transit in cities such as New York City, London and Paris allowed the poor to reach areas where they could earn a livelihood. Public and council housing projects cleared slums and provided more sanitary housing options than what existed before the 1950s.Sam Roberts (May 8, 2005). "Before Public Housing, a City Life Cleared Away" The New York Times.
Slum clearance became a priority policy in Europe between 1950–1970s, and one of the biggest state-led programs. In the UK, the slum clearance effort was bigger in scale than the formation of British Railways, the National Health Service and other state programs. UK Government data suggests the clearances that took place after 1955 demolished about 1.5 million slum properties, resettling about 15% of UK's population out of these properties.Becky Tunstall and Stuart Lowe (November 2012). "The impact of post-war slum clearance in the UK" Social Policy and Social Work. The University of York. Similarly, after 1950, Denmark and others pursued parallel initiatives to clear slums and resettle the slum residents.
The US and European governments additionally created a procedure by which the poor could directly apply to the government for housing assistance, thus becoming a partner to identifying and meeting the housing needs of its citizens. "Inter-war Slum Clearance" The History of Council Housing; UK "A New Urban Vision" UK's History of Council Housing (2008) One historically effective approach to reduce and prevent slums has been citywide infrastructure development combined with affordable, reliable public mass transport and public housing projects.
However, slum relocation in the name of urban development is criticized for uprooting communities without consultation or consideration of ongoing livelihood. For example, the Sabarmati Riverfront Project, a recreational development in Ahmedabad, India, forcefully relocated over 19,000 families from shacks along the river to 13 public housing complexes that were an average of 9 km away from the family's original dwelling.
In 2012, according to UN-Habitat, about 863 million people in the developing world lived in slums. Of these, the urban slum population at mid-year was around 213 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 207 million in East Asia, 201 million in South Asia, 113 million in Latin America and Caribbean, 80 million in Southeast Asia, 36 million in West Asia, and 13 million in North Africa. Among individual countries, the proportion of urban residents living in slum areas in 2009 was highest in the Central African Republic (95.9%), Chad (89.3%), Niger (81.7%), and Mozambique (80.5%).
The distribution of slums within a city varies throughout the world. In most of the developed countries, it is easier to distinguish the slum-areas and non-slum areas. In the United States, slum dwellers are usually in city neighborhoods and inner suburbs, while in Europe, they are more common in high rise housing on the urban outskirts. In many developing countries, slums are prevalent as distributed pockets or as urban orbits of densely constructed informal settlements.
In some cities, especially in countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, slums are not just marginalized neighborhoods holding a small population; slums are widespread, and are home to a large part of urban population. These are sometimes called slum cities.
The percentage of developing world's urban population living in slums has been dropping with economic development, even while total urban population has been increasing. In 1990, 46 percent of the urban population lived in slums; by 2000, the percentage had dropped to 39%; which further dropped to 32% by 2010.
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