Slum upgrading


Slum upgrading is an integrated approach that aims to turn around downward trends in an area. These downward trends can be legal, physical, social, or economic." The main objective of slum upgrading is to rehabilitate them into functional neighborhoods by addressing the social needs of the community, and improving integration into the formal urban economy.
Slum upgrading is used mainly for projects inspired by or engaged by Commonwealth Bank and similar agencies. It is considered by the proponents a necessary and important component of urban development in the developing countries. Many slums lack basic local authority services such as provision of safe drinking water, wastewater, sanitation, and solid-waste management.
Many people do not believe that slum upgrading is successful as community planners believe that there is no successful alternative of where these displaced slum dwellers should go. They point to the difficulties in providing the necessary resources either in a way that is beneficial to the dwellers or in a way that has long-term effectiveness.

Background and overview

Slums have posed a huge problem for development because they are by definition areas in which the inhabitants lack fundamental resources and capabilities such as adequate sanitation, improved water supply, durable housing or adequate living space.
Many governments have tried to find solutions to the problem, and one of the proposed solutions is slum upgrading. Slum upgrading is essentially a strategy in which the infrastructure of a slum is improved, such as giving adequate water supply and sewage to the community. Additionally, because of the tenuous legal status of slum inhabitants, often strategies include the legalization of the right to the land on which slums are built.
The concept of slum upgrading primarily involves the introduction of infrastructure, connecting the slum to a nearby urban core. This promotes social cohesion, improving the social mobility, health, and quality of life a slum's residents, and encourages development and economic integration to the urban area as a whole. Slum upgrading is an alternative to the practice of slum clearance that has been practived since the mid-20th century, most notably in cities such as Hong Kong and Tokyo. In fact, nearly two-thirds of the population growth that has occurred in that time period has been in urban areas. Not only have we seen the growth of urban populations as a whole, but the world has also seen phenomenal growth with regards to individual cities, including megacities. By 2015, the world will likely have 550 cities with a population greater than one million – an increase of 464 cities from 1950. Currently, only one city has a population large enough to be considered a "hypercity." However, by 2025 Asia alone may have eleven of these cities.
The key factor in this has been that the cities that have grown most rapidly have been cities in the developing world. For example, the cities of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Lagos, Nigeria, are forty times larger than they were in 1950. While much of this growth has come as a result of population explosion, mass migration from rural areas to the cities has accounted for a huge portion of this worldwide urbanization. The great increase in population has had tremendous implications in the urban ecology in the developing world. The major effect of this has been the rise of the slums.

History

Until the 1970s, countries took a very hands off approach to the difficulties of third world housing. In essence, there were three solutions taken seriously by the international community: subsidized mortgages, prefabrication, and "organized self-help". However, people began to recognize housing as a basic need, requiring more invasive measures and thus giving rise to the idea of slum upgrading).
In 1972, John F. C. Turner published his book, Freedom to Build, in which he argued for a theoretical strategy to solve the problem of slums. He argued that governments should not try to tackle the housing problem itself, but all of the components of the area. Thus, by implementing good sewage and clean water and good paths for people to walk on, people would gradually better their abodes on their own.
Many countries have shifted policies towards slum upgrading policies and have started to remove slum dwellers from their homes to improve living standards in these specific areas. Some countries, such as China, still hold the policy of bulldozing squatter settlements, but other countries, such as Brazil, have shifted away from this strategy and worked on urban renewal projects via slum upgrading policies. Slum upgrading proved easier and cheaper and without the public relations nightmare that comes with pictures of housing developments getting bulldozed.
Until recently, most countries had very little in terms of formal policy measures to undertake slum upgrading, and so the problem of slums has generally worsened over the years. The World Bank has undertaken many major slum upgrading projects since the 1980s, but fundamentally, it does not solve the problem of slums – it simply helps fix the problems with current slums. Worldwide, there are approximately one billion people living in slums. However, that number is expected to rise to two billion by the year 2030, and the policy of slum upgrading will not affect the mass migration of the rural poor to the cities.
In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals were developed and agreed upon by all 192 UN member countries. Goal 7 was to ensure environmental sustainability, and one of the targets under this goal was "to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers". As the MDGs touched on the issue of slums, it has also refocused attention on how to alleviate the problem of slums. The UN-HABITAT officially supports the policy of slum upgrading, making it one of the foremost ways of urban renewal with respect to slums.
According to the 2006/2007 UN-HABITAT State of the World's Cities Report, the countries of Egypt, South Africa, Mexico, Tunisia, and Thailand stand out in their efforts towards slum upgrading. Indeed, their slum growth rates had fallen markedly in the various countries. The report went on to say that in order to stem the growth of slums in the world's cities, countries are going to have to make some hard choices and make major financial commitments to accomplish the Millennium Development Goals towards lifting a significant number of slum dwellers out of poverty.
According to Habitat for Humanity International some common barriers to slum upgrades are:
  • Insufficient legal and regulatory systems
  • Excessive land regulation
  • Gender discrimination
  • Corrupt, inefficient, or inadequate land registration systems
  • Disintegration of customary and traditional protections
  • Lack of political will around the issue

    Examples of solutions

Pollution solutions

In cities such as Mexico City, Mexico, the local government has installed a program which prohibits the driving of certain cars on certain days of the week, depending on color-coded stickers assigned based on license plate numbers. This has reduced the pollution levels in Mexico City drastically and has greatly increased the quality of life and safety of the air for all inhabitants, even though it is still at a level, which scientists say, is equivalent to smoking half a pack of cigarettes per day because of the still vast number of cars and unregulated industry, releasing masses of pollutants into the Mexico City air. Also, the government has invested in a scheme to improve the city's public transport system, and more specifically its trains. It has invested to provide many new stops in the city, and new trains and rails too. So far, this has also decreased pollution levels significantly by reducing the number of cars on the roads. The scheme has been underway for roughly 4 years now.

Single-family homes

In Salvador, Brazil, a Cities Alliance project focused on upgrading slums with single-family homes. The project, known as PATS was a partnership between Cities Alliance, the Italian Government, and the World Bank.
The project had three goals: slum elimination, community engagement and education, and improving residents' access to services. The main goal of the project was slum elimination in the area. This was to be done by moving the families from their informal settlement into single-family homes in a newly developed area. Community engagement and education was achieved by incorporating educational programs that would teach residents how to improve their health, education, and economic status. To improve residents' access to services, the program would give the families access to utilities such as garbage collection, and connection to water, electricity, and sewage.
According to the report, 984 families were transferred into new homes over a 5-year period. These families all had the opportunity to attend courses on how to improve other aspects of their lives specifically their health, education, and finances. At the time of this report, 80% of the families had garbage collection, 71% were connected to water, 88% were connected to electricity, and 84% were connected to sewage. This model achieved the stated objective of reduction/elimination of the slum population in that area by almost 1,000 homes while improving other aspects of the families' day-to-day lives.

Multi-family homes

The Marins-Pecheurs project, which was implemented by The Most Clearing House organization in Agadir, Morocco, aimed to relocate families living in slums with minimal social disruption. This project had to work within the land constraints of the area since it was an urban setting in a country with land scarcity. Because of the land issues single-family homes were not an option and multi-family homes were seen as a better solution.
The project created small row houses and apartments for sale and rent to squatters near their current site in Agadir. This was to be done by assisting the squatter families to demolish their shacks and to move their possessions to the new location. Because Morocco does not have a renting culture community engagement was incorporated into the planning process so that residents would be better able to understand the reasons and benefits for choosing a multi-family home model rather than a single-family home model.
The Marins-Pecheurs project re-housed squatter households in multi-family apartments. The community, ANHI, and the local government developed the following format: 175 semi-finished row houses, 40 apartments units with a total of 450 apartments for squatter families. It also incorporated community involvement at every level and established community working groups to make certain the housing project fitted the needs of the people. During the construction phase, many residents were able to gain paid employment in, or related to, construction work.