Slums

December 14, 2006 5:53 PM

One-billion slum dwellers. An interview with Jockin Arputham who helped set-up Shack/Slum Dwellers International.
posted by tellurian (6 comments total)

very interesting topic. i remember the first time i saw urban shack slums like this. for some reason i had never pictured that kind of poverty. i always envisioned a small village in the middle of nowhere, and it does seem that that is what is in pictures most of the time. it was a changing experience. especially since, as they say in your first article, it is very unlikely the whole city is like this. there is probably a fairly wealthy financial and upper class sector, sometimes just a few blocks from a sea of makeshift homes constructed out of scrap.

in one novel i read (was it barbara kingsolver's the poisonwood bible?), one of the characters moves to a neighbourhood like this after growing up in middle class america. she talks about the difficulties of raising her children in a place like this from a perspective of one who has known other things. it is mind boggling to think about living your life in a place where things like decent sanitation are not givens.

unfortunately, though, the last link totally fubared my browser (safari 2.0.4). maybe i'll try back later for that one...
posted by mosessis at 6:49 PM on December 14, 2006

The U.N. article reads a lot like Mike Davis's Planet of Slums without explicitly mentioning it... Unfortunately, the full-text of the New Left Review article upon which he based the book is no longer freely available online.
posted by themadjuggler at 7:50 PM on December 14, 2006

Great committee-chosen name for a charity: Shack/Slum Dwellers International
posted by tombola at 3:49 AM on December 15, 2006

Interesting article in today's NY Times wherein:

"Under a government program that is unusual in slums the world over, investors both here and from abroad are doing what was once left to philanthropists: giving slum dwellers new apartments free of charge.

Builders raze entire slums and use part of the land for tenement houses to shelter the former residents. The apartments are 225 square feet, the size of a typical shanty here. In return, the developer wins the right to build lucrative towers on the rest of the land, and pays nothing but the cost of resettlement."

Sounds like they get clean water and sanitation with no loss of living space at the cost of going vertical.
posted by Standeck at 10:15 AM on December 15, 2006

.
posted by kozad at 10:15 PM on December 15, 2006

Sounds like they get clean water and sanitation with no loss of living space at the cost of going vertical.
This will work for some Standeck, but by no means all (as evidenced by the remarks on the second page of that NY article). It's a common occurrence in the reading that I've done to find a great reluctance from slum dwellers to leave behind the sense of community that slums engender.
posted by tellurian at 2:54 PM on December 17, 2006