Opinion - Leader Page Articles   

Slums are cities of the future

Kalpana Sharma

Even if income poverty is not so acute in urban slums as in some rural areas in India, everyone living in a slum suffers acute deprivation of water and sanitation. Then there is the fear of being forced to move at any time.

PRIME MINISTER Manmohan Singh, while inaugurating the metro rail project in Mumbai on June 22, said something that would have gladdened the hearts of the 10,000 people attending the World Urban Forum III (WUF III) in Vancouver, Canada at around the same time. Speaking of urban renewal, he said it was not just about flyovers, metros, high-speed buses, and subways. "It is basically about improving the quality of life of all citizens in urban areas, especially the poor".

Although the metro rail project that he inaugurated might not automatically improve the quality of life of people in Mumbai, and questions have been raised about its cost-effectiveness compared to other, cheaper options, at least it represents a step towards recognising that a strong efficient public transport system is essential to improve the quality of life in Mumbai for all its citizens. Mumbai already has a fairly good public transport system, compared to other cities in India. In a study done by Professor Peter Newman from Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, Mumbai comes out among the top three cities in the world in terms of availability and usage of public transport.

In fact, if we were to select one attribute that qualifies Vancouver, the host city for the urban meeting, for its title of being the world's most liveable city, as concluded by a survey of 127 cities by the Economist Intelligence Unit, it would be the quality of its public transport. Apart from its dramatic location on the Pacific Ocean with snow-covered mountains within easy reach of the city, and its ethnically diverse population, the city stands out in stark contrast to the standard north American city in a number of ways. It has refused to follow the typical American style of suburban sprawl, where the well-heeled live outside the city in vast estates, or in gated communities, and drive to work in their personal cars, while a smaller, usually poorer population lives in the city centre that is deserted and empty in the evening and becomes a haven for drug addicts and other social dropouts. Vancouver does have its share of homeless and deprived communities who live just a couple of blocks east of the convention centre where the World Urban Forum was held. You also see beggars, mentally unstable, drug and alcohol addicts wandering its streets. But as a city it is almost European in its concepts. It is a city for walking, has excellent public transport, and is disability friendly. The air is clean, the Mayor is proud of the fact that the number of cars on the city's roads is actually decreasing rather than increasing, and that it has refused to have a freeway running through it.

One doubts, however, whether the Mayors, Ministers, and planners from the world's cities present at WUF III realised the importance of the decisions that Vancouver as a city took two decades back. As in most such meetings, which community organisers dismiss as little more than talk shops, "networking" and "dialogue" are often no more than people stating their known positions. So while government representatives go through the motions of speaking about inclusiveness while continuing to plan without any consultation, NGOs and community groups attend such meetings with few expectations and complain about exclusion and the violation of the rights of the poor. Both groups hear each other, but don't really listen.

A few refreshingly different voices did stand out over the five-day meeting. One such was that of South Africa's Minister for Housing Lindiwe Sisulu. She told the conference how her government had decided to go about tackling the virtually intractable problem of homelessness in South Africa. Unlike other countries, the poor in South Africa are located outside the cities because of the history of apartheid and separate development. As a result, the challenge of dealing with these slum settlements is not just improving living conditions but ensuring that the settlements are as much a part of the city as the formal housing within the city confines.

In May this year, Dr. Sisulu took the unusual step of calling a meeting in Cape Town where government representatives met with members of the Federation of the Urban Poor, an affiliate of the Shack Dwellers' International (SDI), which works in 21 countries. Six provinces committed substantial resources to the South African representatives of the urban poor who have undertaken to build their own houses on land given by the government. Dr. Sisulu believes this is a replicable pattern to deal with urban poverty and homelessness. She used the meeting in Vancouver to convince other Ministers from Africa.

Africa is one of the fastest urbanising continents. If the South African example works, and is replicated elsewhere in Africa, it might present a way out of the dilemma facing many governments. They feel the state does not have the capacity to deliver housing for the poor and they know that the private sector feels no sense of commitment to do this either despite having the resources. As a result, their cities are caught in the slum spiral — no solution for existing slums and no way to stop new slums.

"Slums are the emerging human settlements of the 21st century", states the "State of the World's Cities 2006/7" report released by U.N.-Habitat at Vancouver. By next year, one of every two people in the world will be a city dweller. Of these, a substantial number will be slum dwellers. In fact, the report focusses largely on the issue of urban poverty and slums. It notes that in the last 15 years, the growth of slums has been unprecedented, the number of slum dwellers in the world rising from 715 million in 1990 to about 998 million today. It estimates that at the present rate of growth, there will 1.4 billion slum dwellers by 2020, comprising roughly 80 per cent of the world's population.

Needless to say that the majority of the world's urban poor are in Asia (581 million) followed by sub-Saharan Africa (199 million) and Latin America and the Caribbean (134 million). India alone has 170 million slum dwellers. But it is sub-Saharan Africa that is witnessing the fastest growth of its slum population that has doubled in 15 years. Today 71.8 per cent of its urban population lives in slums.

Asia and Africa

Slums are the result not just of rural poverty but also conflict leading to large-scale displacement. This is particularly evident in Africa. They can also be the site of much greater disease and deprivation for poor populations than rural areas. This again is more applicable to countries in Africa than to a country like India. The U.N.-Habitat report holds that urban health indicators and nutrition levels of the young are as bad or even worse in slums than in rural areas. However, Indian data clearly shows that under five mortality remains higher in rural areas. Also literacy levels are higher in Indian slums than in the villages and even accessibility to health care is better. Most slum dwellers in India find some kind of work and earn money while their equivalents in rural areas are often left for months without any work or any prospect of money. Levels of acute malnutrition are relatively rare in urban poor settlements in India even though every now and then such instances do arise. Recently, the Maharashtra government had to address the problem of malnutrition amongst young children in a Mumbai slum when 11 malnourished children were admitted to a city hospital.

What is indisputable, however, is that even if income poverty is not so acute in urban slums as in some rural areas, everyone living in a slum suffers acute deprivation of basic services of water and sanitation apart from the insecurity of living in a place from where they could be forced to move at any time. In fact, it is the absence of security of tenure that is central to dealing with the problem of slums. Yet, many countries continue to follow the path of demolishing slums, hoping such action will deter further slum formation. The U.N.-Habitat report quotes a global survey of 60 countries that noted that 6.7 million people faced eviction between 2000 and 2002 in cities compared to 4.2 million in the previous two years. Often these demolitions took place without adequate notice being given to the evictees thereby violating their basic rights as citizens. Protests and interventions, even by the U.N., have made little difference to governments determined to pursue this policy.

The future we have been told is urban, and that the cities of the future will be largely populated by the poor. Even if steps are taken today, this reality will not change. If facts could shift policy, such facts should. Unfortunately, the process of setting priorities in many of our countries is based on factors external to the facts and the objective reality. This came out clearly in Vancouver.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Into the home stretch
Strengthening a valuable scheme
Slums are cities of the future
The Pacific and the Indian monsoon
A journey to remember across China
Sustenance and surplus: the key
Brown promises to be tougher on terror
Congo's jungle terrorists disband
Deeply anguished
LTTE's regret
On imperial apologists
Laudable
Medicine vs. engineering

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu