The Planet of SlumsReport

By Evan Muyskens

Slums of Poverty

•Poverty is the lack of basic human needs, such as clean water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter, because of the inability to afford them. This is also referred to as absolute poverty or destitution.•Relative poverty is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages. About 1.7 billion people live in absolute poverty; before the industrial revolution, poverty had mostly been the norm. •With the success of the industrial revolution, the world has experienced a new unprecedented level of urbanization over the past 60 years. Urban theorists predict half of the world’s growing population will live in cities in the near future. They believe once we reach that point in urbanization it will be the point of no return.

Megacities and Mega Slums

•Only the most developed cities in the world along with emerging global markets will account for 95% of the global urban growth. About sixty cities will reach a population of five million people whereas megacities like Mexico City, Shanghai, Beijing, and Lagos are expected to reach an urban population of more than 20 million within the next 5 years.•With this increase in population, there are over 200,000 reported slums on Earth. Statistics suggest every sixth person on Earth must handle miserable and degrading living conditions, while the total number of slum dwellers increases about 25 million every year. India, Mexico, Bangladesh, and Nigeria are just a few of the hosts to “Mega Slums” which are some the largest slums in the World.•Mega slums arise when shantytowns and squatter communities merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty, usually on the urban periphery.

Slum Conditions

•The five great metropolises of South Asia (Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Dhaka) contain about fifteen thousand distinct slum communities that accumulate to a total population that has grown to more than 20 million.•Just how do these metropolises meet such dire living conditions? In downtown Dhaka in Bangladesh, urban centers have become home to an increased majority. Motor vehicles have tyrannized modern cities due to an exponential rise in sales since recent decades, exceeding urban planners’ expectations rapidly. The resultant air pollution and congestion have reduced living conditions for residents and placed a unreasonably high health burden on the poor, who are now the more susceptible to pollution-related illness and disease.

Urban Growth

•Rapid urban growth in terms of ethnic diversity, economy deflation, and state cutbacks has created an inevitable equation for the mass production of slums.•The urban poor have to solve a complex equation as they try to optimize housing cost, tenure security, quality of shelter, journey to work, and sometimes, personal safety.•“Every day around the world illnesses related to water supply, waste disposal, and garbage kill 30,000 people and constitute 75% of the illnesses that affect humanity,” stated by public health expert Eileen Stillwagon.

Economic Inequalities

•To this day, continued economic development is constrained by the lack of economic freedoms. Economic liberalization includes extending property rights, especially to land, to the poor, and making financial services, notably savings, accessible.•Inefficient institutions, corruption and political instability can also discourage investment. The only hope of the slums population is that of government or charity support in health, education and infrastructure, which helps growth by increasing human and physical capital.