CITB02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter pp. 659-665: Local Economic Development, Global Governance, Social Inequality
The City Reader - Key Findings & Messages from The Challenge of Slums by: UN-
HABITAT (pp. 659-665)
• Introduction:
o The very nature of urbanization considered as a whole and the conditions of urban life
considered in specific detail is in the process of transformation.
▪ New technologies lead to new relationships, new global economies, and new
challenges of local, regional, and global governance.
▪ But within the context of global urban change, no issue is more important than the
persistence of an age-old urban problem: the complex of poverty, social inequality,
and communities plagued by slum conditions of almost unimaginable proportions.
o To some degree urban inequality has existed in all cities throughout history; the homes and
neighbourhoods of the poor have always been significantly different (in the worst of ways)
than royal palaces and the comfort of middle-class living conditions.
▪ But the problem of urban slums - areas either in center-cities or on their peripheries
where masses of the disenfranchised live hand-to-mouth lives and cope with terrible
living conditions - is particularly an issue of global urbanism.
▪ Nearly one-third of the urban population worldwide is living in these conditions.
o "The locus of global poverty is moving to the cities, a process now recognized as the
'urbanization of poverty' (p. 659).
▪ The majority of slum dwellers are in developing countries, and their numbers
increased dramatically during the 1990s, and are expected to double by the year
2020.
▪ Though not all slum dwellers are poor, most earn their livings in what are called
"informal sector" activities: that is, off-the-books and unregulated trades that are
sometimes clearly illegal but which are nonetheless in demand within the larger global
urban economy.
o Local and regional authorities urgently need to implement urban planning and economic
development policies designed to prevent the emergence of new slums and upgrade the
conditions of existing ones.
• The Main Findings:
o In 2001, 924 million people, or 3.16 per cent of the world's urban population, lived in slums;
the majority of them were in developing regions, accounting for 43% of the urban
population, in contrast to 6% in more developed regions.
▪ Africa carries the large proportion of the urban population resident in slums in 2001
(71.9%) and Oceania had the lowest (24.1%).
▪ With respect to absolute numbers of slum dwellers, Asia dominated the global
picture, having a total of 554 million slum dwellers in 2001 (about 60% of the world's
total slum dwellers), Africa had about 187 million (20%), while Europe and other
developed countries had 54 million (6%).
o It is almost certain that slum dwellers increased substantially during the 1990s.
▪ It is further projected that in the next 30 years, the global number of slum dwellers
will increase to about 2 billion (if no firm action is taken).
o It is generally considered that urban populations grew faster than the capacity of cities to
support them, so slums increased, particularly in South Asia.
o More than half of the cities on which case studies were prepared for this report indicated
that slum formation will continue, and only some indicated otherwise.
