Planet of SlumsHistory 5

Presented by Briana Kather

August 8, 2010

Megacities

• It is predicted that 95% of the buildout of humanity will happen in urban areas of developing countries.

• These urban areas will drastically grow, they will double their size in the next generation.

• China is a big urbanization country. • They are urbanizing at a speed unprecedented in

human history, as the author states. • This was becoming known in China when they

began to add more city-dwellers in 1980s than all of Europe did in the entire 19th century.

• There are many third world megacities, whose population has made an extreme jump from 1950 to 2004. Some of these countries have are Mexico City, going from 2.9 million to 22.1 million, and Seoul-Injon that went from 1.0 to 21.9 million.

• New megacities include populations in excess of 8 million or more.

• Since these cities are exploding with more people, they are also growing with new urban networks, corridors, and hierarchies.

• Although these cities are making new discoveries and networks, unfortunately, they are also becoming the biggest areas of urban poverty, which is the tragic aspect of them.

Overurbanization

• It is driven by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs.

• This is occurring in the mega cities of the developing world.

• These countries have been held to be too large in relation to their countries industrial centre.

• Instead of the countries following the great industrializing cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, they are resembling more of Victorian Dublin, who suffered problems of the de-industrialization more than the industrialization.

• This rapid urban growth, unfortunately, has been a recipe for the mass production of slums.

• Since the 1970s, slum growth has outpaced urbanization.

• This slum growth is becoming known in many countries.

Prevalence• Slums are affecting the world everywhere. • They are were identified in the mid 19th century by

overcrowding, poor or informal, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure.

• The highest percentage of slum-dwellers is 99.4 percent of the urban population, in Ethiopia and Chad.

• Following that is Afghanistan with 98.5 percent, then Nepal with 92 percent.

• The fasted growing slums are in the Russian Federation because they are only dependent on one industry.

• A few of the poorest urban populations are in Luanda, Maputo, Kinshasa, and Bolivia. These are some of the poorest cities because two-thirds or more of the residents earn less than the cost of their minimum required daily nutrition.

• While there are great numbers of slums, not all of the urban poor are slum-dwellers. Many of the urban poor actually live outside of the slums.

• Some of these individuals have to survive off less than a dollar a day.

Attempts to Improve

• These attempts began in the 1970s when the Third World governments abdicated the battle against the slum.

• The IMF and the World Bank were in constant battle. • The World Bank attempted to set parameters in

urban housing policy, but it did not go as well as they planed.

• The World Banks attempt resulted in improving the slums instead of replacing them.

• Their goal was less ambitious which then caused more problems.

• Their cost-recovery provisions priced the poorest of the poor out of the market for self-help loans. It also caused individuals to try to upgrade and rationalize self-help housing.

• In 1987 it was estimated by one of the World Bank critics that 30-60 percent of the population were unable to meet their financial obligations of sites-and-services provision or loans for upgrading.

• Their original ambitions were soon poached by the middle class or non-needy.

DANGER!

• Slums have a bad geology.• They are on unstable soil because of their

contamination by generations of mining. • This unstable soil can lead to slope failure and

landslides. • A survey in 1990 revealed that if the slums were not

located on eroded soil, they were on steep hillsides or erodable river banks.

• 16 percent of squatters were under imminent to medium-tern “life risk and/or loss of their property.

• One of the world natural disasters in postwar United States occurred in a shanty town. It was an avalanche in Puerto Rico, caused by heavy rains and killed 500 people.

• The way to reduce such hazardous sites is by massive public works and hard engineering to stabilize landslides with geotextile nets, gunnite, and rock bolts. There are also other approaches like drilling deep drainage wells and pumping water out of saturated soils.

• This help is not very visible and is very difficult in Third World cities because of their lack of potable water and latrines.

Sources• http://fotservis.typepad.com/photos/mother_india_calcutta_var/slums.jpg• http://www.foxnews.com/images/330974/0_61_megacity_dhaka2.jpg• http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2007/presskit/images/urban.jpg• http://www.oralchelation.com/images/ethiopia.jpg• http://www.solarnavigator.net/venture_capital/venture_capital_images/money_world_bank_protest_jakarta.jpg• http://www.reformjefferson.org/images/hillsideSlums.jpg• http://www.indypendent.org/wp-content/photos/Slums.jpg