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BITS Pilani | K.K Birla Goa Campus

A Report On

Growth Of The Slums In The World

Submitted To:

Dr Meenakshi Raman

Instructor, Technical Report Writing

BITS Pilani K.K Birla Goa Campus

Prepared By Team 3 :

Malak Mahesh Shah 2014A3PS222G

Nikhil Maheshwari 2014A3PS260G

Arjun Varanasi 2014A3PS251G

Harshit Garg 2014A3PS257G

Ritesh Mohan Monga 2014A3PS256G

Sribalaji M. 2014A3PS241G

A report submitted in partial

fulfilment of Requirements of

BITS F112 : Technical Report Writing

April 18, 2015.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to our instructor, Dr.

Meenakshi Raman, under whose support and capable guidance this report

was made possible.

We would like to thank each and every person who has been involved in

the successful compilation and presentation of this report.

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ABSTRACT

The growing issue of slums has necessitated an in depth analysis which we

undertake in this report. We examine the growth of slums in the world and

various factors related to it. We discuss the major causes and impacts of

this growth and analyze in detail the various trends associated with it. The

major pitfalls and the collective global actions needed to be taken in the

years ahead to eradicate slums and improve the housing situation have

been highlighted in this report.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TOPIC PAGE

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

1. Introduction 1

2. Major Causes 3

2.1 Rural Urban Migration

2.2 Colonialism and Segregation

2.3 Political and Social Conflicts

2.4 Poverty

3. Trends in Countries 14

3.1 Developing Countries

3.2 Developed Countries

3.3 Analysis of Trends

4. Impacts 22

4.1 Economic

4.2 Socio-Cultural

5. Conclusions 29

6. Recommendations 31

List of References

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1. INTRODUCTION

Slums were common in the United States and Europe before the early 20th

century. New York City is believed to have created the worlds first slum,

named the Five Points in 1825, as it evolved into a large urban settlement.

Since then with the advent of industrialization in many countries slums

have spread across the world and have catapulted into a global

phenomenon. Improving quality of life in the slum is one of the

millennium development goals of the United Nations. The increasing

demand on natural resources along with decreasing quality of life,

informal economy and social exclusion necessitates a study of the causes,

impacts and trends in growth of slums which we look at in this report.

The objective of this report is to assess the major causes and impacts of

the growth of slums in the world and analyzes the trends of growth in both

developing and developed countries. It also seeks to identify suggestive

measures that can be applied in order to counter these challenges

effectively.

We will consider regions that have the following For the purpose of this

report properties as slums:

Inadequate access to safe water

Inadequate access to sanitation and infrastructure

Poor structural quality of housing

Overcrowding

Insecure residential status

This report is authorized to course BITS-F112 (Technical Report

Writing).The information for this report is purely secondary data and is

sourced from various articles of many websites including but not limited

to the UN-HABITAT survey, a comprehensive worldwide survey on

slums. We have incorporated significant statistical data including graphs

to analyze quantitatively and qualitatively the current and estimated future

situation and develop a viable situation for the same.

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The report is broadly divided into five sections. The first section deals

with the primary causes of the growth of slums over the years. The second

section introduces differences between slums in developed and developing

countries and provides an in depth analysis of various trends in growth.

The third section deals with the economic and socio-cultural impacts of

the growth of slums. The next section sums up the conclusions reached in

the previous three section and the fifth and last section lists out various

recommendations for alleviating the growing menace of slums.

The crucial factor upon which eradicating slums ultimately depends, is

providing income earning opportunities. In the end, families can only

afford non-slum housing if they have good incomes. In a global

environment where formal-sector urban jobs have been lost almost

everywhere and where there are no proposals to improve the situation, the

prospects are still promising if decisive action is taken globally.

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2. MAJOR CAUSES

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.

2.1 RURAL URBAN MIGRATION

Rural people migrate to urban in search for better jobs, better schools for

their child and for diverse income opportunities. Migrated rural poor

people with their lack of skills and high competitive market forces them to

settle in low cost house is one of the reasons for the expansion of slums.

The increasing rates of population in the urban cities are increasing at

uncountable rate and to prevent the overcrowding in the urban cities.

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

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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.

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.

Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, the second largest slum in Africa and

third largest in the world.

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

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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.

The majority of the new workers in the urban labor force seemed to create

their own employment and start their own businesses, or work for small-

scale family run enterprises. The self-employed were engaged in a

variety of activities such as hustling, street vending, knife sharpening,

prostitution, selling

drugs and selling fireworks. Other migrants found jobs as barbers,

carpenters,mechanics, maids, personal servants and artisans. Others

managed to become successful entrepreneurs with several employees

making high incomes.

Figure : Probability of being Poor by Migration Status Across Size Class

of Towns

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2.2 COLONIALISM AND SEGREGATION

Some of the slums in todays world are a product of urbanization brought

by colonialism. 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 Bombays 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

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segregation-conscious colonial city centers of Latin America. Marcuse

suggests ghettoes in the United States, and elsewhere, has been created

and maintained by the segregationist policies of the state and regionally

dominant group.

By several measures of residential segregation, Asian Americans are less

isolated than either blacks or Hispanics. In 2010, the typical Asian

American lived in a census tract with a lower share of his or her own race

and a higher share of non-Hispanic whites than did the typical black or

Hispanic; Asian Americans also are less segregated than whites. However,

looking at long-term trends, Asian Americans (and Hispanics) are at least

as segregated as they were in 1980, while black segregation has declined

somewhat.

In 2010, the average Asian American lived in a census tract in which

Asians were 20% of the tracts residents. By comparison, the typical black

lived in a tract that was 45% black and the typical Hispanic lived in a tract

that was 45% Hispanic. (This comparison should be treated with caution:

Other race and Hispanic groups are more numerous than Asians, and so

they have greater potential to cluster). Asian Americans also are likely to

have a higher share of non-Hispanic whites in their neighborhoods than do

blacks or Hispanics.

In 2010 the typical Asian American resided in a tract in which non-

Hispanic whites were 48% of the tracts population, compared with 36%

for the typical non-Hispanic black and 37% for the typical Hispanic.

Asian Americans are less segregated than other groups under another

often-used measure of residential segregationthe dissimilarity index,

which captures the degree to which a population is unevenly spread

among census tracts of a metropolitan area. It ranges between 0 and 1,

with higher values revealing that a group is more highly concentrated, or

segregated. In 2010, Asian-white dissimilarity was 0.41, compared with

0.59 for black-white dissimilarity and 0.48 for Hispanic-white

dissimilarity.

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Looking at change from 1980 to 2010, the Asian-American population is

at least as segregated today as it was three decades ago, although the level

of segregation between those years varies depending on the measure used.

In 2010, 11% of Asian Americans lived in a census tract in which at least

half of the tracts residents were Asian, the same share as in 1980. By

comparison, in 2010, 43% of Hispanics lived in a majority-Hispanic tract,

compared with 34% in 1980. Both groups grew rapidly during this period.

The black population grew more slowly, and African Americans are

markedly less likely to live in majority black census tracts in 2010 (41%)

than in 1980 (56%). Non-Hispanic whites are also less likely to reside in

majority white tracts in 2010 (90%) than in 1980 (96%).

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2.3 Political and Social Conflicts

An essential part of city life is constant change: building and rebuilding, the

succession and occupation of different groups, the relocation of industry and

commerce, and processes of marginalization and impoverishment. In the

capitalist city, this is largely driven by the search for higher returns and optimal

land use, and this has led to the physical expression of inequality in built form,

of which slums lie at

the lowest socio-economic level. In developing cities, where land use is

still partially dictated by traditional uses or controlled by governments,

slums have tended to sit outside of the formal market system, to some

extent, acting as a residual for older market systems of exchange and

income generation rather than the specialized shops of formal urban

distribution systems.

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.

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.

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.

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In November 2006, two gangs fought for three days in Mathare, one of Africas

most overcrowded slums, in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. Eight people were

reported to have died and at least 9,000 people displaced, after a row over

control of a lucrative illicit brewing market in the slum. The people of slums

were displaced and forced to move into different slums.

While cities were once seen as places of opportunity and privilege, they are also

places of despair, poverty and conflict. As millions of people crowd into slums

in the developing world each year, gangs become more powerful as local

government surrenders authority, either through impotence, indifference or

collusion. In many cases militias and gangs control streets that become no-go

areas for police.

Due to lack of basic social and economical amenities like lack of water people

of slums tend to indulge themselves in crimes varying from petty thefts to brutal

murders. Some of these even include crimes like theft, muggings and illegal

disconnections of water pipes by thieves who collect and sell the water. Many

of the crimes occur in urban slums, which lack sufficient piped water.

Reports of muggings, gun battles, murders, gang fights, drug wars, sexual

violence and mob justice have become all too familiar. Indeed, urban insecurity

is gaining importance on the international stage not only because of terrorist

attacks but because of the daily violence that dominates many peoples lives -

further fuelled by the rapid growth of cities. A few slum residents, instead of

stealing from others in theier slum, steal water from nearby cities. For instance,

police of Nairobi claim that, instead of stealing from others in the slum,

dwellers sneak into Lavington,a nearby cirty to steal water. Affected Lavington

residents have asked the government to intervene.

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2.4 Poverty

Slums result from a combination of poverty or low incomes with inadequacies

in the housing provision system, so that poor people are forced to seek

affordable accommodation and land that become increasingly inadequate. The

numbers of urban people in poverty are, to a large extent, outside the control of

city governments, and are swelled by a combination of economic stagnation,

increasing inequality and population growth, especially growth through

inmigration.

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.

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

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raise incomes and create opportunities, squalid slums are likely to continue.

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.

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.

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

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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 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.

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3. Trends in Countries

This section deals with the differential rate of growth of slums in different

countries as seen in the UN-HABITAT survey in 2001. Some 71 per cent

of city-dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa live in slums, and the figure is 40

per cent for Asia and six per cent for developed nations.

We analyze the slums in developing and developed countries and find the

key reasons for the differences between them.

3.1 Developing and Newly Industrialized Countries

The developing and newly industrialized countries are characterized by

lower average life expectancy, less education and lower average income

along with rapid economic growth, industrialization and rapid growth of

urban population.

developing economies according to the IMF

developing economies out of scope of the IMF

graduated to developed economy

Newly Industrialized Countries

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Around 33% of the urban population in the developing world in 2012, or

about 863 million people, lived in slums. The proportion of urban

population living in slums was highest in Sub-Saharan Africa(61.7%),

followed by South Asia (35%), Southeast Asia (31%), East

Asia (28.2%), West Asia (24.6%), Oceania(24.1%), Latin America and

the Caribbean (23.5%), and North Africa (13.3%). Among individual

countries, the proportion of urban residents living in slum areas in 2009

was highest in the Central African Republic (95.9%). The world's largest

slum city is in Mexico City.

It is estimate that by 2050, the world's urban population will swell to 6.25

billion, with 5.1 billion people living in cities in the developing world. Of

these, as many as 2 billion people will live in slums. History has taught us

that urbanization and economic development go hand in hand. But the

experience of developing world nations today has been more mixed. In

some oft-cited cases like the booming regions around Beijing and

Shanghai, city growth has been associated with rapid economic

development. And throughout the developing world, cities have far higher

levels of economic productivity when compared to their nations as a

whole. But in many other cases, urbanization has been accompanied by

low levels of economic growth a phenomenon that Harvard economist

Edward Glaeser has called "poor country urbanization."

Observing the graph given below that combines the metrics of overall

urbanization, growth in slum population, and economic growth we see

the "heterogeneous experiences" of some of the developing countries

with the largest slum populations. We observe that countries with the

fastest economic growth over the last 20 years were also the ones that

managed to significantly reduce the proportion of their urban residents

living in slum conditions. But rapid urbanization was frequently

not associated with improved economic growth, a result of the "push

factors" that bring people to cities, including war, natural disasters, and

extreme rural poverty. This phenomenon is called "growth without

growth."

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The countries are ranked by the proportional growth or reduction in

slum population from 1990 to 2007, as shown in the grey bars. The solid

dark line measures overall urban population growth, so the countries

where the gap between the gray bar and the solid line is larger (India

and Indonesia in particular) saw far more growth in non-slum areas. In

places like Pakistan and Nigeria, slum growth accounted for nearly all

urbanization over this period. The dotted line indicates overall economic

growth, as measured by percentage increase in economic output or GDP

per capita (divided by ten in order to fit on the same graph scale).

Countries where slum populations fell (Egypt, Mexico, and Indonesia)

had similar levels of per capita economic growth as those at the opposite

end of the spectrum, where most urban growth occurred in slum

populations (like the Philippines, Pakistan, and Nigeria).

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Complicating matters further is the fact that efforts to deal with these

problems often have little effect. In 2009, the Indian government

announced the creation of an urban investment scheme with a

particularly bold goal: within just five years, they would achieve Rajiv

Awas Yojana a "slum-free India." Two years later, with the ambitious

housing plan still essentially in its conception stage, the country's

Committee on Slum Statistics came out with a sobering estimate. Even

with these renewed efforts, the population living in the country's slums

would grow 12 percent between 2011 and 2017.

Countries that managed to curb the growth of slums, such as Brazil or

Egypt, appear to be those where slum policy relied on a combination of

instruments including efforts to increase the transparency and

efficiency of land markets, to improve local governance, to increase public

investments massively, and to increase the supply of cheap housing.

3.2 Developed Countries

World map by quartiles of Human Development

Index in 2014.

Very High

High

Medium

Low

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Developed countries are characterized by high per capita income, high

level of industrialization and high general standard of living. While slums

have largely disappeared in developed countries, there are still

approximately 54 million urban dwellers in high-income countries living

in slum-like conditions.

As we can see from the table above, developed countries have a much

larger percentage of total population living in urban regions compared to

the world average, yet they have a much smaller percentage of slum

dwelling population compared to the world average.

We look at a few cities in developed countries with slums.

Kamagasaki, Japan

The biggest slum in Japan is Kamagasaki. In 2014, Kamagasaki was home

to about 25,000 people, mainly elderly day laborers, an estimated 1,300 of

whom are homeless. The rest are spread among two state-run shelters and

dozens of cheap hostels.

Los Angeles, US

The city does not officially use the word slum. However, Los Angeles

slums exist both as individual buildings and as disinvested neighborhoods,

encompassing 20 per cent of the LA area and some 43 per cent of the

population.

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Sydney, Australia

The 3 regions of Sydney considered as slums are the inner-city former

slums, now partly gentrified, extensive public-sector estates toward the

periphery and areas with cheap housing, centered about 20 kilometers to

the south-west of the central business district (CBD), where many new

immigrants and other disadvantaged groups live.

Slums in Caracas

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3.3 Analysis of Trends

World Distribution of slum dwellers (millions) by

region, 2001.

It is clear from the above chart that developed countries have a markedly

smaller fraction of the world population living in slum like conditions.

This phenomenon can be understood by revisiting the major causes of

slum formation and growth of slums.

Developed countries are already industrialized and have achieved more or

less stable rate of urbanization. They have a high GDP and per capita

income thus low rates of poverty coupled with social security schemes and

good housing regulations these countries have managed to

maintain/reduce the size of slums.

Developing countries undergo rapid industrialization; These countries also

have a rapidly increasing rate of urbanization. Developing countries have

low GDP and per capita income thus have widespread poverty and a lack

of good housing regulations leads to uncontrolled growth of slums.

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The graph above shows the almost zero rate of growth of slum population

in developed regions (Depicted by triangles) and the rapid rate of growth

in less developed regions (Depicted by squares).

These unsustainable growth trends also form feedback loops with

regards to social conflicts, another major cause of slum growth, that is

social conflicts and criminal activities in slums lead to even further

growth of the slums. Another feedback loop is that any improvements in

quality of life in slum neighborhoods can increase the pace of in-

migration, leading to more overcrowding and a cycle of increasing

poverty.

Thus we have seen the situation of slums in developed and developing

regions and analyzed the trends in growth in both the regions

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4. Impacts

Due to the explosive growth of slums and their global nature, slums have

several far reaching impacts. We shall discuss the important economic and

socio-cultural impacts in this section.

4.1 The Economics of Slums in the World

The global expansion of urban slums poses questions for economic

research, as well as problems for policymakers. Some economists have

suggested a modernization theory of slums: according to this thinking,

slums are a transitory phenomenon characteristic of fast-growing

economies, and they progressively give way to formal housing as

economic growth trickles down and societies approach the later stages of

economic development. Even if slum areas appear stable in the short- or

medium- term, this argument holds, slum living only represents a

transitory phase in the life cycle of rural migrants: the slum dwellers or

their children eventually move into formal housing within the city, so that

the benefits of migration into the slum get passed along from generation to

generation.

Moreover, slums do not always seem to be a temporary phenomenon of

migration to cities: in many countries slum areas have been growing for

decades, and millions of households find themselves trapped in slums for

generations. This might suggest that todays slums pose a problem of a

different nature: because of multiple market and policy failures, acute

governance and coordination problems that hinder investment, and

unsanitary living conditions affecting the dwellers human capital, life in

the slum might constitute a form of poverty trap for a majority of their

residents.

Investment Inertia

Slums not only seem trapped in a low-human-capital equilibrium, but they

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also exhibit dysfunctional institutions, low levels of physical capital, and

poor access to developed services. Slums can be thought of as areas of

depressed public and private investment where neither government nor

broader society has managed to organize in a way that provides for

widespread provision and maintenance of public goods (and we are

defining public good broadly to include clean water, sanitation, garbage

collection, a social safety net, and the legal infrastructure of property

rights that allows for an effective market in land and housing).

A first factor is the well-known informality of property rights

intrinsic to slum areas. Without formal land titles, slum dwellers

lack the incentives to improve the quality of their homes and

neighborhoods. Informal settlements have typically emerged on

vacant government land, which implies that the property rights

over the land held by individuals living there are highly illiquid,

although they may be enforceable locally.

A second factor is the concurrence of overcrowding of slum areas

and low marginal returns from small upgrading investments. It

may therefore not be rational for slum dwellers to finance

investments in housing or infrastructure. In addition, many

upgrades may require rather large private investments. This

situation stands in stark contrast to some of the problems that

characterize rural poverty, where relatively cheap technologies can

often lead to substantial improvements in income and welfare.

A third, less well-known cause for low investment levels in slums

could be the high rent premiums that dwellers must pay to live in

close proximity to the city, and which reduce opportunities for

savings accumulation. While slum dwellers are typically thought

of as squatters occupying vacant public land, available evidence

suggests that a large number of dwellers across slums are in fact

rent-paying tenants.

A fourth set of factors that can cause low investment involve the

extreme coordination failures and governance gap intrinsic to

slum life.. A large amount of anecdotal evidence suggests that

allocation mechanisms in slums are inefficient and that private

24

actors or bureaucratic entrepreneurs fill the governance space, as

opposed to legitimate local governments or community

representatives. In some areas the slumlords can often rely on

the support of the local administration to settle rent disputes, and

they may collude with local chiefs to discourage improvements in

the housing infrastructure that could lead to more entrenched

tenancy rights. In areas where chiefs are not able to enforce their

authority, gangs sometimes fill the governance space to enforce

rules of their own, levy taxes, and control expenditure and

investments in their neighborhoods. In other areas, the formal

governance system is entirely absent and has been replaced by

other interests.

A fifth potential contributor to low investment traps in slums

comes from the well-known Todaro paradox (1976): slum living

standards cannot be improved without generating an additional

influx of rural migrants, which in turn depresses public and private

investments in the existing settlements. This may give little

incentive for the public sector to invest in infrastructure and public

goods in slums. The seminal model on the issue of ruralurban

migration is modeled as the ruralurban wage gap as a driving

force behind migration decisions. However, this work had little to

say about locations decisions of migrants within cities, and we are

not aware of any more recent theoretical attempt to model those

location choices.

The conceptualization of slums as places of poverty traps is at odds with a

modernization view, which assumes that the prevalence of slums and

urban poverty should decrease as markets develop and the forces of

economic development come under way.

Over the past 20 years, countries that experienced fast economic growth

are also the ones that achieved the most significant reductions in the

proportion of urban households living in slums. In a cross-country

25

regression framework, it was found that the prevalence of slums in any

given country was significantly correlated with a variety of aggregate

economic indicators, including GDP per capita (negatively), the debt stock

and debt service, and inequality measured by the Gini coefficient

(positively). However, cross-country correlations overlook widely

heterogeneous situations, as rapid urbanization rates in developing

countries are often not associated with fast economic growth. In fact, a

number of the least developed countries have experienced a rapid growth

of their urban population without experiencing much economic growth at

all.

4.2 Social Impact of Slums

Rapid urbanization places remarkable strain on housing and serviced land.

By 2030, about 3 billion people, or about 40 per cent of the worlds

population, will need proper housing and access to basic infrastructure and

services such as water and sanitation systems. This translates into the need

to complete 96,150 housing units per day with serviced and documented

land from now till 2030.

Unfortunately, especially in the developing world, supply is often limited

by inadequate governance systems and human resource deficiencies, as

well as by institutions and regulations which are either obsolete or lacking

in capacity, or are poorly informed. So far, the failure of urban planning

and the construction sector in matching demand for homes has resulted in

a huge housing backlog that has led to the development of slums in a

variety of contexts globally. Due to constraints in formal housing and land

delivery systems, more and more people who would otherwise qualify for

housing programmes are resorting to slum settlements.

In some cities, up to 80 per cent of the population lives in slums. Fifty-five

million new slum dwellers have been added to the global population since

2000. Sub-Saharan Africa has a slum population of 199.5 million, South

Asia 190.7 million, East Asia 189.6 million, Latin America and the

26

Caribbean 110.7 million, Southeast Asia 88.9 million, West Asia 35

million and North Africa 11.8 million.

Slums are a clear manifestation of a poorly planned and managed urban

sector and, in particular, a malfunctioning housing sector. Each day a

further 120,000 people are added to the populations of Asian cities,

requiring the construction of at least 20,000 new dwellings and supporting

infrastructure. In Latin America and the Caribbean current housing needs

are estimated at between 42 million and 52 million dwellings,

respectively. Estimates concerning total housing needs in Africa have been

set at around 4 million units per year with over 60 per cent of the demand

required to accommodate urban residents.

Socially, slums remain isolated from rest of the urban society and exhibit

pathological social symptoms like drug abuse, alcoholism, crime,

vandalism and other deviant behaviour. The lack of integration of slum

inhabitants into urban life reflects both, the lack of ability and culture

barriers.

Slums are not planned hence they lack basic amenities. Slums have

invariably extreme unhygienic conditions. There are no toilets and people

defecate in open. Slums have practically no drainage. Most of the slums

are located near drains which contain filthy stagnant water.

The poor living condition in slums affects the health of people mentally

and physically. Water contamination cause disease like blood dysentery,

diarrhoea, malaria, typhoid, jaundice etc. Children with bloated bellies or

famished skeletons, many suffering from polio, are common sight. People

are not aware of health problems.

UN-Habitat reports suggest some slums are more exposed to crimes with

higher crime rates (for instance, the traditional inner-city slums) but 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 in all do not have consistently high

crime rates; slums have the worst crime rates in sectors maintaining

27

influence of illicit economy such as drug trafficking,

brewing, prostitution and gambling. Often in such circumstance,

multiple gangs fight for control over revenue.

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.

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.

Child malnutrition is more common in slums than in non-slum

areas. In Mumbai and New Delhi, 47% and 51% of slum children under

the age of five are stunted and 35% and 36% of them are underweighted.

These children all suffer from third-degree malnutrition, the most severe

level, according to WHO standards. A study conducted by Tada et al.

in Bangkok slums illustrates that in terms of weight-forage, 25.4% of the

children who participated in the survey suffered from malnutrition,

compared to around 8% national malnutrition prevalence

in Thailand. In Ethiopia and the Niger, rates of child malnutrition in urban

slums are around 40%.

28

Slum dwellers usually experience a high rate of disease. Diseases that

have been reported in slums

include cholera, HIV/AIDS, measles, malaria, dengue, typhoid, drug

resistant tuberculosis, and other epidemics. Studies focus on childrens

health in slums address that cholera and diarrhea are especially common

among young children. In Haiti (where a majority of the population live in

poverty), after the 2010 Earthquake, an outbreak of Cholera spread

throughout the country, killing 8321 people. Besides childrens

vulnerability to diseases, there is a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in slums

among women.

In addition to poor living conditions, low vaccination rates cause excess

cases of disease in slums as well.

Slums have been historically linked to epidemics. This trend has continued

in modern times. 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. 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.

Governments often ignore slum dwellers; they are excluded from voting,

city development plans, and full protection under the law. Without the

rights and voice that other citizens have, people living in slums constantly

face political and social exclusion.

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5. Conclusions

The desirable future, as perceived by most people, is a world where

everyone has the basic needs of life: where everyone has enough to eat, a

decent home in sanitary and unpolluted surroundings, the opportunity to

earn a decent living, access to health care and education, and the means to

access the things that are important to them. What the people in cities

throughout the world would like to have as a minimum is:

the means of earning or obtaining a reasonable livelihood, preferably

with a secure job under safe working conditions;

affordable, adequate and appropriate housing, with security of tenure;

access to clean water, basic sanitation and other urban services, along

with a clean and attractive environment;

the means to participate in broader society and have access to its

opportunities;

To achieve the goal of cities without slums, all of these elements are

necessary. More advanced countries have demonstrated, through a

concerted programme of action, how these basic goals could be

implemented to achieve a high quality of life. The styles and methods by

which this was achieved differed in that some countries had more

government involvement than others; but all methods involved

government, the private sector and civil society working together or

negotiating solutions. These basic requirements are now largely taken for

granted in most of the developed world. However, perhaps half of the

worlds population does not have any of these minimum living conditions

met. Of these disadvantaged people, half live in the slums of the

developing world and since the 1970s, these numbers have more than

doubled. Both the proportion and numbers of slum dwellers will increase

substantially in the next 30 years (in fact, the numbers will probably

double again) unless action is taken globally, nationally and locally to

solve these problems.

30

Considerable advances have been made during the 1990s in most of the

world regions, particularly in health care and education, because these

areas have been targeted and acted upon by international and national

agencies in a concerted and organized way.3 Some progress has also been

made in providing clean water and electricity. It is in the areas of

employment generation, housing delivery and urban environmental

management that progress has not been adequate to meet growing

demand.

Good governance has also continued to be sorely lacking in many places,

with corruption and poor management widespread. At present, there is

little concerted effort to achieve these aims in the developing world; in

fact, some of them are actually denied as legitimate goals by people in

positions of authority. Where there is agreement, the means of reaching

these aims has been hotly argued so that the goalshave not been

explicitly targeted and indirect issues have taken precedence. There has

also been considerable backsliding on the issues of employment and

housing in a number of highly developed countries for the same reasons of

denial, lack of consensus and application.

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6. Recommendations

Recent years have seen a dramatic growth in the number of slums as urban

populations have increased in developing countries. Nearly a billion

people worldwide live in slums, and some project the figure may grow to

2 billion by 2030, if governments and global community ignore slums and

continue current urban policies. Our group believes change is possible. To

achieve the goal of cities without slums governments must undertake

vigorous urban planning, city management, infrastructure development,

and slum upgrading and poverty reduction.

Slum removal

Some city governments and state officials have simply sought to remove

slums. This strategy for dealing with slums is rooted in the fact that slums

typically start illegally on someone elses land property, and they are not

recognized by the state. As the slum started by violating another's property

rights, the residents have no legal claim to the land.

But, slum removal by force tend to ignore the social problems that cause

slums. The poor children as well as working adults of a citys 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. Hence, this

method needs to work more effectively by providing the residents with an

alternative option or a compensation, keeping in view the landlords

interest.

Slum relocation

Slum relocation strategies rely on removing the slums and relocating the

slum poor to free semi-rural peripheries of cities, sometimes in free

housing. 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 residents life, including

sources of employment, distance from work and social life. Slum

relocation that displaces the poor from opportunities to earn a livelihood,

32

generates economic insecurity in the poor. In some cases, the slum

residents oppose relocation even if the replacement land and housing to

the outskirts of cities is free and of better quality than their current house.

Slum upgrading

Governments should begin to approach slums as a possible

opportunity to urban development by slum upgrading. The approach

seeks to upgrade the slum with basic infrastructure such as sanitation,

safe drinking water, safe electricity distribution, paved roads, rain

water drainage system, and bus/metro stops.

The assumption behind this approach is that if slums are given basic

services and tenure security that is, the slum will not be destroyed

and slum residents will not be evicted, then the residents will rebuild

their own housing, engage their slum community to live better, and

over time attract investment from government organizations and

businesses. If governments can clear existing slums of unsanitary

human waste, polluted water and litter, and from muddy unlit lanes,

they do not have to worry about the shanty housing. Squatters have

shown great organizational skills in terms of land management and

will maintain the infrastructure that is provided.

Urban infrastructure development and public housing

Urban infrastructure such as reliable high speed mass transit system,

motorways/interstates, and public housing projects have been cited as

responsible for the disappearance of major slums in the United States and

Europe from the 1960s through 1970s.

As cities expand and business parks scatter due to cost ineffectiveness,

people move to live in the suburbs; thus retail, logistics, house

maintenance and other businesses follow demand patterns. City

governments should use infrastructure investments and urban planning to

distribute work, housing, green areas, retail, schools and population

densities.

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Thus the crucial factor upon which eradicating slums ultimately depends,

is providing income earning opportunities. In the end, families can only

afford non-slum housing if they have good incomes. In a global

environment where formal-sector urban jobs have been lost almost

everywhere and where there are no proposals to improve the situation, the

prospects are still promising if decisive action is taken globally.

34

List of References

< http://www.citymayors.com/report/slums.html>

< http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1891640/>

< http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/01/amazing-endurance-slums/8120/>

< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum#History>

< https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.27.4.187>

< http://unhabitat.org/housing-slum-upgrading/>

All tables and figures taken from UN-HABITAT global report on human settlements ,2003.

Anna K. et all. The Challenge of Slums.UK: Earthscan Publications Ltd. 2003.