Exponential Slum

Exponential Slum

Mike Davis estimates in his book “The Prevalence of Slums” that there are two hundred thousands slums on earth today and are continuing to grow into mulit-million person mega-slums . The definition of the word slum has changed from the early eighteen hundreds meaning a room or ally occupied by unscrupulous characters to later defining an overcrowded, informal housing sector of the city which lacks basic infrastructure needs. Whatever the definition, Davis points out alarming numbers about the slums in cities around the world and further startlingly descriptions of the slums damaging effect in regions of the Soviet Union. John Turner’s powerful rephrasing of ”Housing” from a noun into a verb helps to reinforce the understanding of constant struggle for shelter sought by those living in the slums.
Slum has always carried a negative connotation however the dynamics of the place are only slowly being understood today as shown by Janice Perlman’s study “Six Misconceptions about Squatter Settlements.” She systematically breaks six common stereotypes of slums including: kinds of people living there, why do they live there, the nature of informal settlements, image of housing, meaning of self help, and the definition of success. Her point is not to demonstrate that these places do not need help, but rather reinforces the need to reanalyze the complex fabric of the slum so that we can better address the needs as sought after by the inhabitants.

Interestingly the United Nations is aware of it’s misdiagnosis and prescription for the slums and continues create new paradigms for addressing what seems like an insurmountable problem. From the first United Nations Conference on Human Settlements of 1976 in Vancouver, the UN believed that the slum conditions could be solved by a large central government eliminating with its all mighty hand the problems of the world. Unfortunately this model did not meet the needs of slums on a local communities scale. This combined with the Structural Adjustment Program led to the sharpest rise in urban poverty levels in the 1980’s. A new decentralized approach was applied in the 1990’s that work closer to communities and the private sector to provide basic needs and shelters. This approach also failed do to local authorities not implementing the provisions, improper understanding of success, and the inequality of recourses. Todays approach strives to understand more closely the economies and understandings of success by the inhabitants of the Slums and to further balance recourses amongst all parties.

Kofi Annan state’s an alarming statistic claiming that more than half of the urban population in the developing world lives in slums, with little or no access to decent housing, clean water, basic sanitation, regular jobs or steady income. However he ends his speech with an optimistic tone on future cities having the potential for efficiency for living, consuming and producing. Finally he believes the design community will play an important role stating that “we have ideas and best practices to guide us, including participatory planning, “green” architecture, cooperative housing finance and successful instances of inner city revival.”