Slum Upgrading - Background and Overview

Background and Overview

Slums have posed a huge problem for developing nations because they are by definition areas in which the inhabitants lack fundamental resources and capabilities such as adequate sanitation, improved water supply, durable housing or adequate living space. Many governments have tried to find solutions to the problem, and one of the proposed solutions is slum upgrading. Slum upgrading is essentially a strategy in which the infrastructure of a slum is improved, such as giving adequate water supply and sewage to the community. Additionally, because of the tenuous legal status of slum inhabitants, often strategies include the legalization of the right to the land on which slums are built.

The concept of slum upgrading, a strategy for the improvement in a slum's infrastructure, is one that has evolved out of a period of unprecedented urban growth since the mid-20th century. In fact, nearly two thirds of the population growth that has occurred in that time period has been in urban areas. Not only have we seen the growth of urban populations a whole, but the world has also seen phenomenal growth with regards to individual cities, including megacities (cities in excess of 8 million inhabitants) and hypercities (in excess of 20 million inhabitants). By 2015, the world will likely have 550 cities with a population greater than one million – an increase of 464 cities from 1950. Currently, only one city (Tokyo) has a population large enough to be considered a "hypercity." However, by 2025 Asia alone may have eleven of these cities.

The key factor in this has been that the cities that have grown most rapidly have been cities in the developing world. For example, the cities of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Lagos, Nigeria, are forty times larger than they were in 1950. While much of this growth has come as a result of population explosion, mass migration from rural areas to the cities has accounted for a huge portion of this worldwide urbanization. The great increase in population has had tremendous implications in the urban ecology in the developing world. The major effect of this has been the rise of the slums.