Urban Slums…
A Challenge for the
21st Century
Imagine…
… you lived on rubble …
… in a makeshift shack …
… in a cardboard box …
… by the railroad tracks …
… employed on a garbage dump ...
… with
eyes fixed on a
future
of …
… hard work and survival
One out of six people live in
such conditions.
One out of six. One out of six. One out of six. One out of
six.
The Dimensions of the Challenge
Urban Growth
Every week urban areas gain another 1.3 million people.
That’s 67 million people per year.36 million of them end up in slums
=100,000 new slum dwellers per
day
By 2025, over 60% of the world’s population are
expected to live in urban areas.
That means the size of urban dwellers will be double the size of rural
populations.
That means the size of urban dwellers will be double the size of rural
populations.
In 2000, there were 388 cities in the world with 1 million or more residents.
By 2015, there will be a projected 554 such cities. Of these, 426 will be in developing countries.
Africa will have to accommodate an additional 200 million people in its cities within the next 15 years
In Asia an additional 590 million people will live in urban areas within
the next 15 years
93% of the world’s additional urban population will live in cities of the less developed
world.
The challenge of coping with massive urban
population growth, thus, is greatest for the countries least able to
meet it.
Growth – it follows –
won’t happen here…
… but
HERE.
Unsurprisingly, population growth rates in slums are
higher than in virtually any other environment in the
world
The Indian urban scenario has been aptly summarized as the 2-3-4-5 syndrome.
In the last decade, as India’so annual average
population growth rate was 2%
o urban India grew at 3%
o mega cities at 4% o and slum populations
rose by 5%
In 2003, the number of slum dwellers was estimated at 1 billion.
Projections show that 2 billion people will be living in slums by 2030.
That would be almost 1 out of every 4 persons
“Slums are places where
hunger prevails, and where young people are drawn into anti-social behavior, including crime and
terrorism, for lack of better alternatives.” Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka,United Nations Human Settlements
Program (UN HABITAT)
“Urban poverty will be the most significant and politically explosive problem of this century”
World Bank
The way we respond to it will largely determine the future of our world!
Urban Slums The fastest-growing
mission field
Despite this new reality, most Christian NGOs and mission organizations still concentrate their efforts in rural areas and mid-sized towns.
In 2004, World Vision, for example, still focused only 17% of its work on urban agglomerations.
As cities grow, hence, the percentage of urban Christians is declining.
1900 1925 1950 1975 20060
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
In 1900, Christians numbered 69% of urban dwellers.
By 2008, that figure dropped to 36%.
“Although the center of evangelical Christianity has shifted to the Two-Thirds world, the great
surge of missions outreach in the 20th century largely passed by the burgeoning urban population of the
non-Western world.”
Operation World
The Church often
remains irrelevant and inward-focused in
the exploding cities of the Two-Thirds
World.
“Yet, slums present a huge opportunity for holistic human development and the growth of the Church, but the little that is being done is insufficient at best…. If the Church wants to be where the unreached are, we need to be focusing our attention on urban centers, particularly in the developing world. Since squatters and slum-dwellers constitute an immense people group, we must make the urban poor the primary thrust of missions.”
Viv Grigg, Director, Urban Leadership Foundation
Domestic violence, poverty, systemic
injustice and spiritual emptiness
cripple the God-given potential of
hundreds of millions of families
living in slums around the world.
Their plight cries out.
How do we respond?
What does Jesus’ teaching
mean for us today in this global context?