The document discusses the rapid growth of megacities and slums in developing countries over the past 50 years. It notes that over 95% of population growth will occur in urban areas in these countries, leading to a doubling of their populations over the next generation. This rapid urbanization has outpaced infrastructure development and job creation, resulting in widespread poverty and the rise of massive slums housing over 1 billion people globally by 2005. The document examines different typologies of slums from small communities to "megaslums" merging into continuous belts of informal housing. Attempts by governments and organizations like the World Bank to improve conditions have faced challenges in addressing the needs of the poorest residents.
2. Megacities Ninety-five percent of the buildout of humanity will occur in the urban areas of developing countries. These areas will drastically change and their population will double in size in the next generation. An big urbanization country is China. Mike Davis states that they are urbanizing at an extraordinary rate in human history. China began to add more city-dwellers in the 1980’s than all of Europe did in the entire 19th century. There are numerous Third World megacities whose population has boomed between 1950 and 2004. An example would be Mexico City whose population jumped from 2.9 million to 22.1 million Newer megacities have populations that exceed over 8 million. Even though these cities are making new discoveries, but they are also becoming some of the biggest areas of urban poverty.
3. Overurbanization Overurbanization is caused by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs. This particular problem is occurring in the megacities of the developing world. Instead of countries resembling and following industrializing cities like Chicago or Los Angels, they more resemble a Victorian Dublin, who suffered from de-industrialization more than industrialization. This rapid urban growth has resulted in the mass production of slums. Since 1970 slum growth has outpaced urbanization, and slum growth is making an appearance in many countries.
4. Global Slum Census By the classical definition of a slum it is characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure. UN researchers estimated that there were at least 921 million slum-dwellers in 2001 and more than 1 billion in 2005. That is almost the world’s population. According to UN-HABITAT, the world’s highest percentages of slum-dwellers are in Ethiopia, Chad, Afghanistan, and Nepal. Followed by Mexico City and Dhaka. The fastest grown slums are in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics.
5. Slum Typology Davis states that there are probably more than 200,000 slums on earth ranging in population from a few hundred to more than a million people. The five great metropolises of South Asia: Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Dhaka; contain about 15,000 distinct slum communities which their populations exceed over 20 million. Although some slums have long histories most megaslums have grown up since the 1960’s. Megaslums arise when shantytowns and squatter communities merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty. Everywhere in the Third World, housing choice is a hard calculus of confusing trade-offs. The urban poor have to solve a difficult equation as they try to optimize housing cost, tenure security, quality of shelter, journey to work, and sometimes personal safety.
6. Attempts to Improve Attempts to improve began in the 1970’s when the Third World government renounced the battle against the slum. The World Bank tried to set parameters in urban housing policy, but that did not go as planned. This attempt helped improve the slums rather than replacing them. Their cost-recovery provisions priced the poorest of the poor out of the market for self-help loans. Also in result it caused people to try to upgrade and reduce self-help housing. In 1987 a critic of the World Bank estimated about 30-60 percent of the population could not meet their financial obligations for sites-and-services provision or loans for upgrading.
