The challenge of slums: global report on human settlements: A review by Madeline Johnston
The Challenge of Slums is the first global report on slums by the United Nations (UN) since the Millennium Declaration by the UN as part of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7: Ensuring Environment Sustainability, which declares a target to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. The report covers everything from the definition of slums, how they are formed, the characteristics and dynamics, as well as the local, national and international policies that shape, enhance or destroy them. This essay summarises the books’ aims to “Create an understanding of human settlements as an evolving system that creates settings for human development” (UNHSP, 2003).
Definition of slums
The UN Human Settlements Programme (UNHSP) recognise that there will be differing characteristics of slums between countries and even cities – similar to how Architects carry out new site analysis for a project site that may only be across the city from their last project. However to be able to assess each slum and deduce where failings in policy are they provide an operational definition of slums as:
- Inadequate access to safe water;
- Inadequate access to sanitation and other infrastructure;
- Poor structural quality of housing;
- Overcrowding;
- Insecure residential status.
Integral to defining a slum and how they are formed is understanding ‘urban poverty’. As the slums are a visible manifestation of poverty, the Cities Without Slums targets are largely about eradicating poverty. Dimensions of urban poverty include:
- Low income; below a nominal poverty line,
- Low human capital; low education and poor health,
- Low social capital; shortage of networks, weak patronage on the labour market, labelling and exclusion,
- Low financial capital; lack of productive assets to generate income or avoid paying large costs.
How they have formed and why they persist
‘The Chicago School’ model of urban organisation sees the economically well-off choosing the most desirable places in the inner-city, with the low-economic weaker groups occupying the residual spaces. Historically, once an area is designated as a slum the middle class would move out, leaving cheap property for landowners to purchase and exploit to the urban poor. The organisation of cities in developing countries is different to that of the Chicago School model. This is because they have developed with modern transport technologies, namely the automobile, making spatial arrangement less about how far they have to walk or commute unless they are the very poor. Current cities and urban poor settlements in developing countries are being exacerbated by the lack of planning for the rate of urban growth, as well as increasing inequality which is fuelled by the current urban growth policies that only benefit the people in power (UNHSP, 2003). Two factors that cause rapid urban growth are;
- Rural-urban migration, there are a myriad of factors as to why this happens, some being that there is more access to services within the city compared to rural areas, or climate migration;
- Bright lights syndrome - which is based on some actuality of there being more economic activity in the city where if they can't get a job in the formal sector they can earn an income in the informal sector.
Globalisation in least developed countries (LDCs) only benefited the wealthy and the poor were not included in the countries development plans. Wealth was not being shared out so living situations and income for the poorest worsened, with the gap in inequality growing larger. "There is very little for unskilled workers in LDCs to do in a globalized economy - so they join the informal sector and live in the slums" (UNHSP, 2003). This causes developing countries to turn into a vicious cycle where lack of skilled workers, concentrates jobs in unskilled sectors which reduces their need for advancing skills. The informal sector can account for up to 60% of jobs within the urban population and is described as "generally small scale industries and commercial activities that are not registered enterprises but provide large amounts of products and services that people use each day" (UNHSP, 2003).
Types of Slums
Inner-city slums are the deterioration of housing as the wealthy move out and poor move in, the rent is frozen due to government policies to ‘help’ the urban poor, but the rent price no longer covers maintenance. Mostly common in developed countries where the rate of economic growth was higher than the urban growth.
Slum estates are public housing that was created to accommodate low income workers, there weren’t any community amenities and were located away from the city centre where transport was too expensive. Eventually they became overcrowded due to workers bringing their families, and the local authority stopped maintaining them, to the point where a natural disaster would destroy the blocks.
Squatter settlements are more common in developing countries where people have illegally occupied a piece of land and built their houses on it. Mostly on public land, the authority would have turned a blind eye to the development, or allowed it to happen illicitly by corrupt politicians or people of authority. The use of unstable land usually avoids immediate eviction because there is no competition for space. If accepted by local authorities they can gain legal rights and security of tenure.
Illegal settlements differ from squatter settlements because it is the legal owner of the land who has subdivided their land for rent/resold it for housing, against planning regulations or land-use plans. Lack of permission or planning fees can make this type of development affordable to the urban poor.
Social dynamics of slums
It is contested whether slums are networks of social and economic mobility or if they are just poverty traps (UNHSP, 2003). Services are often not provided to slums, but alternatives such as illegally tapping into the city electricity grid, or unauthorised bus trips to water taps allow residents some access to basic essentials. The slum dwellers often set up their own businesses from their homes within the slums because it requires little capital and provides services to other slum dwellers. Community cohesion and organisation can lead to neighbourhood wide initiatives being carried out but depends on social structure and attitude of the local authority. Numerous evictions and no perception of security of tenure leads to reluctance to make improvements in case it brings attention from the local authority.
Economic dynamics
Unemployment is virtually non-existent in developing countries because people who do not have formal jobs partake in the informal job market, even children. By not registering their business, individuals can start up with little capital and have much lower outgoings because they don’t pay tax. However not paying tax results in the local authority having less money to invest back into the city to help the urban poor.
Security of Tenure
A common message within the book is to work towards improving security of tenure for the urban poor. Security of tenure is essential for allowing the urban poor to develop and begin the process out of poverty. Without a registered address residents can't get a formal sector job, participate in politics or gain any benefits that are available from the government. “It is the security from eviction that gives the house its main source of value." (Angel, 2001 in UNHSP, 2003) There are arguments for and against working towards secure tenure for the slum dwellers, but most importantly eviction is not the solution. Any solution to do with improving the lives of the urban poor is largely location based. Specifically for tenure, the solution that is implemented depends heavily on the type of tenure situation that exists already.
Best Practice Policies
Research carried out in this book says that these following techniques have not worked in improving the lives of slum dwellers; negligence, ignoring the slums existence in urban planning; eviction, the view that slums don’t contribute anything to the city so must be removed but the residents just relocate to a different periphery; self-help or in-situ upgrading, one off upgrades that initially benefit the residents but actually were cheap solutions that weren’t maintained by government; enabling policies, giving power to the people to control services with no managerial or financial advice; resettlement, usually no better than eviction, residents are moved to peripheries which cannot support their livelihoods.
Instead, the UNHSP (2003) suggests participatory slum improvement as best practice. Improvement projects should use holistic approaches to improving the neighbourhood, in relation to health, education, housing, livelihood and gender. Involving the community from the outset with the government facilitating the improvement at all stages (UNHSP, 2003).
Effective upgrading projects should:
- Deliver social outcomes that reduce inequality and increase participation, therefore benefiting the urban population,
- Work to improve well-being and operation of the whole city now and for future generations,
- Include everyone throughout the whole process including marginalised groups,
- Generate jobs within long term improvement programmes: using local labour skills to develop housing and infrastructure.
As architects designing proposals for slum villages, we can understand the need for participatory design to ensure that the slum dwellers are not alienated by the development. Using materials and building techniques that are vernacular to the region, would not only complement the context of the project but also generating jobs through using local labour workers.
Who has responsibility
It is the work of all organisations and bodies collaboratively that will have that largest effect in eradicating poverty. Inter-agency programmes such as Cities Alliance who partner together organisations to share knowledge and set up the framework for working towards the Cities Without Slums targets. Cities Alliance also created a database of all slum upgrading projects to bring together information and work from numbers of organisations and research groups. Partnering organisations and sharing knowledge such as Cities Alliance are valuable to achieving the MDGs and Cities Without Slums targets.
Civic Action
As seen in the best practice section, participatory design is key to ensure that projects are meeting the needs of the slum dwellers. It is therefore important to understand how different family units and households work in different contexts to be able to implement more effective strategies. Family units are dynamic so one size fits all solutions don't work. This is dependent largely on culture and the internal divisions of power. In some places giving credit to the woman of the family results in the resources being evenly distributed in comparison to giving the credit to the dominant male figure.
Inter-household relationships are key as well, with 30% of slum dweller incomes coming from within the community (UNHSP, 2003). Resources are often pooled together and social organisations informally police residents to ensure fair distribution, and responsible behaviour or they will lighten the load on a household who is struggling due to illness etc.
Review of MDGs
Writing this essay in 2020 there is a question of whether the target of improving 100 million slum dwellers has been met. A report from the 2013 UN Summit (United Nations Department of Public Information, 2013) which provided progress updates on the MDGs states that 200 million slum dwellers gained access to improved water, sanitation and less crowded housing therefore achieving the target twice-over. However, the absolute number of slum dwellers continues to grow due to the fast pace of urbanisation.
The most recent UN conference was held in September 2015, which adopted a new set of goals that built on the achievements of the MDGs. “The proportion of urban population living in slums in the developing regions fell from approximately 39.4 per cent in 2000 to 29.7 per cent in 2014” (UN, 2015). This quote shows that slums are decreasing in size but the rate of urban population growth is never decreasing the number of slum dwellers that exist. The number of people living in slums globally increased from 863 million in 2013 to 880 million people in 2014.
Conclusion
Overall the report has summarised the key issues that form and affect slums across the world. It is an important resource for understanding where failures are and what the best practices are for implementing slum improvement programmes. A key message in the book is that security of tenure, in the form of no threat of eviction is the best starting point for allowing the residents to feel comfortable improving their quality of living within the slum.
References
United Nations Department of Public Information (2013) Millennium Development Goals and Beyond 2015: Goal 7 Ensure environmental sustainability Fact Sheet [online]. Available From: https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/Goal_7_fs.pdf [Accessed 15 November 2020].
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (2003) The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
United Nations (2015) The Millennium Development Goals Report 2015 Summary [online]. Available From: https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20Summary%20web_english.pdf [Accessed 15 November 2020].