This is the life of billions and billions of people living across the world – in different slums, in countries. As a result of rapid urbanisation decent living conditions have become very scarce and cities are not at all prepared to accommodate any sort of growth especially when formal structures are not in place. The urbanisation is not only steadily increasing, but no one can really estimate when it will stop.
The unifying factor between all slums is that they lack reliable sanitation services, law enforcement, supply of water and reliable electricity. All of them are basically caused because of economic stagnation, rapid rural-to-urban migration, poverty, high unemployment, poor planning, social conflicts, forced or manipulated ghettoization (the segregation/isolation of poor underprivileged groups and placing them into a position of little power.)
There were also many variations of these impoverished settlements and were known by different terms across the world. They even formed a part of tourism known as slum tourism in South Africa and India.
• In Brazil slums are known as Favela – a low, and middle income and un-regulated neighborhood which has experienced a lot of historical Governmental neglect. This growing market of tourism in Brazil has evolved in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro – with the largest and most visited most favela being Rocinha.
• In Argentina slums were known as a villa or a villa miseria which refered to a shanty type of town or slum found amongst the largest urban settlements. This name was adopted from Bernardo Verbitsky’s – an Argentine’s journalist and writer’s novel Villa Miseria también es América (“Villa Miseria is also [a part of] the Americas”).
• In Chile, slums are known as Campamento or poblacion callampa (mushroom town). They are given this term (mushroom town)owing to the speed in which these informal structures were built in the 1960’s and 1980’s.
• In Zambia, slums are known as Komboni which are types of compound or informal housing areas. They were particularly common in the capital city of Lusaka and were characterised by a high population density and a low income.
• In China slums are known as urban villages and appear on both the outskirts and the downtown segments of major Chinese cities such as Guangzhou and Schenzhen.
• In the United States of America, during the Great Depression shanty towns were known as Hookervilles.
• During disasters which are particularly triggered by nature such as earthquakes, floods, etc. refugee shelters serve as a restoration for emergency humanitarian relief. For example, when Syrian Refugees had to demolish their homes in Lebanon to seek new shelter, the Iraq Refugee Crisis, the Afghanistan Refugee Crisis or the Rohingya Refugee Crisis.
Is this just about highlighting how bad slums are for the world or proving which country has more slums than the other – its not! As the world advances forward progressively and in a dynamic manner – who can we actually turn to other than ourselves, each one of us to collectively take responsibility in working towards if not eliminating but decreasing these socio-economic problems?
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States
