Design Musings: Slum Upgrading
This post was co-authored by Claire Weil.
No electricity. No water. No sewage. No bathroom. No services. No safety. Tin roof leaking rain water. Plastic sheets. Mountains and rivers of trash. Collapsing structures held together by scraps. Shantytowns, favelas, ghettos, bidonvilles, slums. Growing on the outskirts or at the heart of cities.
Today over one billion people live in slum conditions. That’s 1 in 8 people. Slum, considered informal settlements, are commonly found in cities. They are known for their inadequate housing along with overcrowding and poor living conditions. As people move into urban areas seeking better economic opportunities, governments struggle to support population growth. Many people who do not have access to alternate housing end up in the slums, and many others are born into the slums and struggle to escape. Slum residents do not own the right to the land they live in, but they settle and create homes nonetheless.
The informal nature of slums often leaves residents on their own to access water and sanitation systems. Overcrowding and poor planning create narrow pathways and uneven earthen roads usually overrun by debris. Residents generally have limited access to building materials and turn to mud, wood and scrap metal to build and repair their homes.
Rapid urbanization, poor city planning, poverty, politics, and natural disasters all contribute to the flourishing of slums. Slum residents often get trapped in a cycle of poverty, disease, and violence and their temporary housing becomes somewhat permanent.
So, what can be done to help people who find themselves living in slums? The main response to slums is slum upgrading, which has been tested by numerous governments and organizations including UN-Habitat and Cities Alliance. Slum upgrading ranges from implementing sanitation and safe drinking water systems to paving roads and installing lighting. These upgrades aim to tackle health and safety issues in the marginalized communities living in the slums. The ultimate goal of slum upgrading is to provide residents with government services such as water, electricity, and roads along with titles and access to property.
Slum upgrading is a costly endeavor. Slum removal and slum relocation are cheaper short-run solutions that are more easily marketed, but can create slums elsewhere and disrupt community networks of families and friends. Maintenance is also expensive and difficult to keep up with. Another challenge is that slums are rarely mapped or included in census counts, which results in officials not being aware of how many buildings there are or how many people live in them.
Some advocate for slum upgrading because they see it as a fundamental moral responsibility to alleviate the burden of the poorest. The logic is that by better integrating this population into the economy and the city’s social fabric, the government can improve the physical, economic, social, and environmental conditions of all urban residents. Others fight strongly against it, because it seems like a superficial “band-aid” to deeply rooted problems of urban planning.
We all agree that slums violate fundamental human rights, but how do we eliminate them once and for all? How, as designers, architects, and planners, can we uphold the right to adequate living conditions for all?
Taylor Klinkel and Claire Weil were 2016–2017 Global Health Corps fellows.
