Lecture 18: Planet of Slums

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Lecture 18 Planet of Slums
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Outline

• Inside a slum
• The urban explosion
• Explaining slum growth
• Slum language
• The future what can be done?

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1. Inside a Slum

Javier Auyero
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2. The Urban Explosion

• UN 3.2 billion urbanites 2007, nearly 5 billion
  2030
• 2030 60 in cities
• Biggest increase Asia and Africa - poorest,
  least-urbanised, least able to cope
• By 2017 nearly 500 cities of 1m
• 2025 8 cities 20m - Tokyo, Mumbai, Manila,
  Dhaka, São Paulo, Mexico City, New York, and
  Kolkata

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Mega-City GrowthA Developing-World Phenomenon
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Africa, Asia catch up
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Growth of the Mega-Cities
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3. Explaining slum growth
Dharavi, Mumbai
Kibera, Nairobi
People prefer urban squalor to rural
hopelessness. THE ECONOMIST
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(No Transcript)
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Statistical Horrors

• In 2005 the number of slum dwellers worldwide
  exceeded 1 billion (one third of the worlds
  urban population)
• Ethiopia, Chad, Afghanistan and Nepal 90 of
  urban dwellers live in slums
• 78.2 of the urban population of the worlds
  least developed countries live in slums
• Mumbai is the global capital of slum dwelling
  (between 10 and 12 million people, with 1 million
  living on pavements)
• The poorest urban populations are in Luanda,
  Maputo and Kinshasa, where child mortality (under
  5) exceeds 320 per 1000
• One quarter of the worlds urban population live
  in absolute poverty (a condition characterised
  by severe deprivation of basic human needs,
  including food, safe drinking water, sanitation
  facilities, health, shelter, education and
  information. WHO, 1995)
• Unless massive action is taken, by 2030 there
  will be 2 billion slum dwellers worldwide, and
  half of all urban dwellers will live in poverty

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Qualitative horrors

• Were not just talking about poor people living
  in classic shantytowns on the peripheries of
  Global South cities, but living on rooftops, in
  filled-in airwells in the centre of buildings in
  cages of wire netting erected to protect their
  few belongings on pavements in former
  graveyards (gt1 million people in Cairo) on
  swamps, floodplains, volcano slopes, unstable
  hillsides, rubbish mountains, chemical dumps,
  railroad sidings, desert fringes
• The new urban precariat (as opposed to
  proletariat)

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a) Rural-urban migration

• Today we are seeing dramatic urban growth without
  economic growth no investment, no jobs,
  shrinking public sector, soaring cost of
  land/living. Why are people moving?
• People move for the opportunity, if not the job.
  There is always somebody, 1 in 100, 1 in 1000, 1
  in 10,000, who has made it. The alternative is
  subsistence agriculture which runs the risk of
  starvation, or eviction by commercial
  agriculture/mechanization, or devastation by
  climate change.
• Other factors people are displaced by wars and
  become refugees natural disasters.
• Almost impossible now to tell where city ends and
  the countryside begins in many parts of the
  Global South, people no longer have to move to
  the city the city is growing so fast it moves to
  them.

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• Urbanization has been radically decoupled from
  industrialization, even from development per se.
  (p.13)
• Echoes Henri Lefebvre (1968) in La Revolution
  Urbaine, who argued that urbanization had
  supplanted industrialization as the major vehicle
  of capital accumulation throughout the world, to
  the point where we could one day see the
  complete urbanization of the world.

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b) Natural increase

• Becoming an ever-increasing factor in slum
  expansion (now surpassing rural to urban
  migration)
• Rate of growth of births over deaths in slums is
  increasing the population by tens of thousands of
  people every year

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c) Structural Adjustment Policies

• IMF/WB economic pre-conditions for the granting
  of loans. Beginning in the early 1980s short,
  sharp macro-economic shocks (currency devaluation
  to stop imports and encourage exports, removal of
  state subsidies on foodstuffs, water, transport,
  electricity), followed by economic deregulation,
  trade liberalisation, privatisation of public
  services.
• Aim to get the state out of the development
  process - the market will provide via
  trickle-down. Governments were forced to
  radically downsize the public sector, with
  devastating consequences for the urban poor
  (education, housing, water, food, sanitation,
  health care etc etc)
• People have thus become marginalised by
  market-oriented economic change, creating a new
  non-migrant, indigenous urban poor who are devoid
  of the incomes and basic human needs (and human
  rights) that perhaps their parents or
  grandparents had.

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• The weird logic of this economic programme
  seemed to be that to restore life to the dying
  economy, every juice had first to be SAPped out
  of the underprivileged majority of the citizens.
  The middle class rapidly disappeared, and the
  garbage heaps of the increasingly rich few became
  the food table of the multiplied population of
  abjectly poor. The brain drain to the oil-rich
  Arab countries and to the Western world became a
  flood.
• Fidelis Odun Balogun (1995) Adjusted Lives
  Stories of Structural Adjustment (Princeton U.P.)
  p.80

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The Washington Consensus

• The World Bank has pursued the same set of
  anti-poverty policies for almost 40 years. These
  have three elements
• Broad-based economic growth
• Development of human capital, primarily through
  education
• Minimum social safety nets for the poor
• But it has pursued these policies by rigidly
  adhering to neo-liberal economic orthodoxy (see
  Joseph Stiglitz 2002)
• Privatisation which tends to raise prices for
  the poor
• Capital market liberalisation which can allow
  speculators to destabilise countries economies,
  as has happened in Asia and South America
• Market-based pricing which raises the costs of
  basic foods and fuel for the poor and has caused
  rioting, particularly in South America, e.g.
  Bolivia, Ecuador and, recently, Argentina
  (economists should not be provoking riots around
  the world)
• Free trade which is governed by World Trade
  Organisation (WTO) rules that severely
  disadvantage poorer countries/producers

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4. Slum Language

• The term slum was first published in 1812 in a
  glossary of London slang by James Hardy Vaux, but
  was equated with racket or criminal trade.
• By the 1830s and 1840s, that use had shifted
  the poor were now living in slums (infected by
  cholera epidemics) rather than practicing them.
• In late-Victorian Britain, the term slum didnt
  just describe poor areas it was used
  pejoratively, a comment on the supposed moral
  degeneracy of those who dwelled in poor areas.
  Read anything by Charles Dickens is it by
  chance that he housed Fagin and the Artful Dodger
  in a slum?
• Worst of all, the official labelling of a poor
  area as a slum can justify its demolition and
  clearance (such as in Haussmans Paris, and in
  many slums in the Global South today)

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Words are never innocent.

• What makes the word slum dangerous is the
  series of negative associations that the term
  conjures up, the false hopes that a campaign
  against slums raises and the mischief that
  unscrupulous politicians, developers and planners
  may do with the term. .I am complaining about
  resuscitating an old, never euphemistic,
  stereotype one that was long ago denounced as
  dangerous and yet has now resurfaced in the
  policy arena.
• Alan Gilbert (2007) The Return of the Slum
  Does Language Matter?, IJURR 31 (4) p.701.

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UN operational definition

• A slum household is a household that lacks any
  one of the following five elements
• Access to improved water (access to sufficient
  amount of water for family use, at an affordable
  price, available to household members without
  being subject to extreme effort)
• Access to improved sanitation (access to an
  excreta disposal system, either in the form of a
  private toilet or a public toilet shared with a
  reasonable number of people)
• Security of tenure (evidence of documentation to
  prove secure tenure status, or de facto or
  perceived protection from evictions)
• Durability of housing (permanent and adequate
  structure in non-hazardous location)
• Sufficient living area (not more than two people
  sharing the same room)

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5. The future what can be done?

• The UNs 1999 Cities without Slums initiative
• A major element of its Millenium Development
  Goals campaign
• Two broad purposes
• To publicise the seriousness of urban problems,
  especially in the Global South
• To improve its ability to attract funding with
  which to tackle the issue

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• The Challenge of Slums.is mainly concerned
  with the shelter conditions of the majority of
  the urban poor. It is about how the poor struggle
  to survive within urban areas, mainly through
  informal shelter and informal income-generation
  strategies, and about the inadequacy of both
  public and market responses to the plight of the
  urban poor. But the report is also about hope,
  about building on the foundations of the urban
  poors survival strategies and about what needs
  to be done by both the public and
  non-governmental sectors, as well as by the
  international community, if the goal of adequate
  shelter for all is to have any relevance for
  todays urban poor.

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The worlds biggest killer and the greatest
cause of ill health and suffering across the
globe is listed almost at the end of the
International Classification of Diseases. It is
given code Z59.5 -- extreme poverty. World
Health Organisation (1995) Seven out of ten
childhood deaths in developing countries can be
attributed to just five main causes - or a
combination of them pneumonia, diarrhoea,
measles, malaria and malnutrition. Around the
world, three out of four children seen by health
services are suffering from at least one of these
conditions. World Health Organisation (1996
1998).
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Severe Deprivation of Basic Human Need

• Almost a third of the worlds children have to
  live in dwellings with more than five people per
  room or which have a mud floor.
• Over half a billion children (27) have no toilet
  facilities whatsoever.
• Almost 400 million children (19) are using
  unsafe (open) water sources or have more than a
  15-minute walk to water.
• About one in five children (aged between 3 and
  18) lack access to radio, television, telephone,
  computers or newspapers at home.
• Fifteen percent of children under five years in
  the world are severely malnourished, almost half
  of whom are in South Asia.
• 300 million children (14) have not been
  immunised against any diseases, or have had a
  recent illness causing diarrhoea and have not
  received any medical advice or treatment.
• 144 million children aged between 7 and 18 (11)
  are severely educationally deprived - they have
  never been to school.
• Source UNICEF, 2004

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Champagne glass of income distribution
The stem of the glass is getting thinner. In
1960 the income of the wealthiest fifth was 30
times greater than that of the poorest fifth now
its more than 80 times greater.
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The cost of achieving universal access to basic
social services
The Price of Life?
Need Annual cost (US billions)
Basic education for all 6
Basic health and nutrition 13
Reproductive health and family planning 12
Low cost-water supply and sanitation 9

Total for basic social services 40
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The Cost of Food and Health for All

• Over ten million of the worlds young children
  die each year and, in over half of these deaths,
  malnutrition is a contributory cause.
• The cost of preventing these deaths is relatively
  small 13 billion a year for ten years would
  provide basic health and nutrition for every
  person on the planet (UNDP, 1997).
• By comparison, 30 billion was spent on pizza in
  the US in 2002 (Pizza Marketing Quarterly, 2003)
  and 12 billion on dog and cat food (Euromonitor
  International, 2003).

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Can Economic Growth Halve Poverty by 2015?
Developing World East Asia and Pacific Eastern Europe and Central Asia Latin America and Caribbean Middle East and North Africa South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa
Annual growth rate needed to halve world poverty by 2015 3.8 2.7 2.4 3.8 3.8 4.7 5.6
Historical growth 19601990 1.7 3.3 2.0 1.3 4.3 1.9 0.2
Total growth needed to halve world poverty by 2015 95 70 61 94 95 117 141
How likely is it that the annual economic growth
rate in Sub-Saharan Africa can be increased from
0.2 to 5.6 - a 28 fold increase?
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Can Redistribution Halve Poverty by 2015?
Developing World East Asia and Pacific Eastern Europe and Central Asia Latin America and Caribbean Middle East and North Africa South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa
Poverty decline after a one standard deviation reduction in inequality 67 31 42 45 34 17 62

Source Besley, T. and Burgess, R. (2003)
Halving global poverty. Journal of Economic
Perspectives 17 (3) pp. 3-22.
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Why is nothing done?

• Neoliberal Concepts of Justice
• A neoliberal philosophical position equates
  justice and liberty with freedom from intentional
  coercion. Intentionality is seen as the key
  concept for defining liberty.
• Neoliberals argue that, although the operation of
  the market may result in mass death and disease,
  since it is not the intention of anyone that
  this should happen, no injustice occurs.
• To take this argument about intentional coercion
  to its extreme would mean that a family starving
  in rural sub-Saharan Africa has more freedom
  than e.g. Bill Gates family, as the African
  family are not being intentionally coerced into
  paying taxes.

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Friedrich von Hayek

• Hayek developed this argument to its logical
  conclusion, that societies had no obligation to
  meet the social and economic needs of people, as
  societies did not exist.
• In his 1979 Heidelberg lecture, he argued that
  the word social had no objective meaning as an
  adjective or a noun he stated that nobody knows
  what the social in fact is.
• Hayek concluded that a social market economy is
  no market economy, a social constitutional state
  is no constitutional state, a social conscience
  is not conscience and that social justice is not
  justice.

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Margaret Thatcher-Hayek!

• In 1987, then UK Prime Minister, she spelt out
  Hayeks argument in simple terms
• I think we've been through a period where too
  many people have been given to understand that if
  they have a problem, it's the government's job to
  cope with it. 'I have a problem, Ill get a
  grant.' 'Im homeless, the government must house
  me.' Theyre casting their problem on society.
  And, you know, there is no such thing as society.
  There are individual men and women, and there
  are families.

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Effective and Efficient Anti-Poverty Measures
Progressive tax and income policies, with income
redistribution from rich to poor and from men
to women (in addition to redistribution of income
across an individuals life span by taxing and
reducing income levels in middle age balanced
with then paying social benefits to increase
income during childhood and old age). Active
labour market interventions to create higher
quality jobs. Enforcement of minimum standards
on wages and working conditions of the low paid
within an international framework. Universal
social insurance and public social services - the
basic needs services by introducing
internationally agreed minimum levels of benefit
Greater accountability and increased social
and democratic control over trans-national
corporations and international agencies, to
remedy the democratic deficit.
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Some food for thought

• Poverty is currently the worlds largest source
  of harm it causes more death, disease,
  suffering and misery than any other social
  phenomenon. Poverty is a bigger scourge of
  humanity than plague, pestilence or drought.
  Each year over 10 million children die from
  preventable causes which go untreated due to
  poverty.
• Yet there is no need for any person in the 21st
  century, anywhere, to starve and rot in a slum,
  go without clean drinking water, toilets or
  access to basic health care and education.
  Providing poor people with all these things would
  not have any significant (or even noticeable)
  impact on the lifestyles of the rich. Poverty
  is not an act of god nor inevitable. It is a
  political choice. What is lacking is not
  sufficient money but the political will to end
  poverty.
• In addition, all over the world, there have been
  social movements organised around fighting
  poverty and inequality. Well learn more about
  these on Wednesday.