Journal for Studies in Management and Planning
Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/index.php/JSMaP
e-ISSN: 2395-0463
Volume 01 Issue 10
November 2015
Slums and Squatter Development. A Case Study.
Kavita Bhandari
ABSTRACT
The slum is not only a manifestation of
mismanaged urban planning in the countries
of the South. The existence of slums
worldwide is also a sign that the slum is a
crucial
element
of
contemporary
urbanisation. This article will attempt to
define this phenomenon and understand its
causes. Adequate policy responses are then
suggested. Without finding appropriate
solutions to the housing problems of a
majority of urban dwellers, public and
private decision makers will not be able to
meet the challenges of sustainable
development.
The primary causes of slum development are
urbanisation, migration of the population
from rural to urban areas, lack of proper
affordable residences in the urban areas,
unhygienic living conditions of the people in
these slums. The slums are mostly built in low
lying areas next to water bodies and
drainages. These also pose as a health
hazard for its occupants. The lack of
sanitation facilities like proper toilets and
bathrooms leads to unhealthy habits like
open defecation, washing of clothes in the
polluted river water, breathing in the stale,
unclean air.
The secondary factors like education
facilities, basic government services like
policing, security etc are non-prevalent in the
slum areas. As the slums are an illegal
settlement on government land, the people
have no life security and may be asked to
evacuate at any time. Even the houses they
live in are small compact and tightly packed.
The settlement is very rudimentary and
haphazard without any proper planning.
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These being situated in low lying areas are
the first to be affected during natural
disasters like floods and rains. The
government has taken several measures to
uplift the pitiful living conditions of the slum
dwellers.
The report also contains case studies, both
Indian and foreign, for further explanation
on the life in squatter settlements. The case
study in India is based on Dharavi, Asia’s
biggest slum. The financial capital of India
known as Mumbai is home to estimated 6.5
million slum people.
Nearly half of Mumbai's Population lives in
small shacks surrounded by open sewers.
Nearly 55% of Mumbai's population lives in
Slum areas. Despite of Government efforts to
build new houses and other basic
infrastructure, most of the people living in
slum areas do not have electricity, water
supply and cooking gas.
The second case study is on Sao Paulo, in
Brazil. A home to one of the biggest slums in
the world called Favelas. Slums world‐ over
share some common characteristics
including a higher incidence of violent crime
due to lack of attention from local law
enforcement, a higher incidence of disease
due to poor sanitation and access to
healthcare facilities, the dominance of the
informal economy and political bosses, and a
higher incidence of child labour, prostitution,
and substance abuse. Clearly, the culture of
a nation or region plays a large role in
determining the degree to which these factors
shape the slum. The development of slums
appears to be an entirely organic
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phenomenon which occurs when poorer
countries that have under‐developed
urban management, governance structures
and poor infrastructure undergo rapid
industrialisation and urbanisation and fail to
minimise the disparity of prosperity between
the urban and rural population.
Introduction
One of India’s biggest challenges today is
coping with the wave of urbanization
unleashed by economic liberalization. An
estimated 160 million people have moved to
the cities in the last two decades, and another
230 million are projected to move there
within the next 20 years.
Unfortunately, as any visitor to India can see
for themselves, its major metros and tier‐II
cities are clearly finding it difficult to cope
with the inflow of people. It is no surprise that
India’s famously poor infrastructure is
critically over‐strained. In response, the ill‐
equipped urban systems and the informal
housing that are the slums have expanded
exponentially in the last few decades without
proper access to basic services such as
sanitation, healthcare, education, and law and
order. While they are often teeming with
entrepreneurial activity, they are nevertheless
an inefficient use of the city’s human
resources and land. In order to truly unleash
the productive potential of this dynamic
urban population, India will need to build
scalable urban systems capable of housing,
caring for, employing and integrating large
and increasing numbers of new inhabitants.
India is not alone in this challenge of course;
Mexico, Brazil and Africa have some of the
largest slums in the world. It is unclear that
there are simple solutions to the problem of
slums given their extraordinary organic
growth rates– 70% of the world’s population
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e-ISSN: 2395-0463
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November 2015
is expected to live in urban centers by 2050 –
and solving slums requires a rethink of the
design of cities and their borders as well as of
the role of rural areas. The challenge is
incorporating all of these factors and still
being able to provide safe and sounds
residences to the abundant inflow of people,
with proper planning and without the
compromise on the use of the resources of the
state.
In this article we will be running through the
problems faced by the government due to
slum and squatter settlements. The appalling
living conditions of these illegal settlements,
the health problems caused, the issues faced
by the people living there and ways of
rectifying this situation in the best possible
manner.
What Are Slums?
“Slums are litmus tests for innate cultural
strengths and weaknesses. Those peoples
whose cultures can harbor extensive slum
life without decomposing will be, relatively
speaking, the future’s winners. Those
whose cultures cannot will be the future’s
victims.” - Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming
Anarchy, 1994
A slum is a heavily populated informal urban
settlement characterized by substandard
housing and squalor. While slums differ in
size and other characteristics from country to
country, most lack reliable sanitation
services, supply of clean water, reliable
electricity, timely law enforcement and other
basic services. Slum residences very from
shanty houses to professionally built
dwellings that because of poor quality design
or construction have deteriorated into slums.
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Slums form and grow in many different parts
of the world for many different reasons.
Some causes include rapid rural-to-urban
migration, economic stagnation and
depression, high unemployment, poverty,
informal economy, poor planning, politics,
natural disasters, and social conflicts.
Most of the people who live in slums are
extremely poor, and many are treated as
second class citizens by their society. Health
problems tend to be very high, as a result of
improper sanitation and lack of access to
basic health care. Malnutrition is another
serious problem in many places, as is crime,
which can make them very dangerous for
their inhabitants.
Many people view slums as the ultimate
symbol of inequality, and in some regions,
such areas have formed in some very
unexpected
locations,
sometimes
neighboring the homes of the wealthy.
Organizations that campaign against them
argue that no human being should be forced
to live in such poor conditions, and that as a
basic act of humanity, cities need to provide
livable low cost housing and regulate
construction.
Unfortunately, the solution is seldom this
simple. The world's population is rapidly
growing, putting immense pressure on
available resources, and as developing
countries become more developed, this
pressure is likely to grow. Although it is
somewhat disheartening to think about, gross
inequality seems to go hand in hand with
growing societies.
How Do Slums Develop?
Democracy provides free mobility to its
people. Part of the freedom of India’s
democratic population is the apparent liberty
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to pursue their dreams anywhere in the
country and India’s aspiring population is
dynamic and determined to do so. The great
slums of India are predominantly created
when large numbers of individuals or
families move to the urban centres of their
dreams, usually in search of better economic
prospects. Mumbai has been the number one
choice of generations of Indians for decades.
These urban centres are not geared to, nor
governed in a manner that can accommodate
(or reject) such an influx of people. As a
result, the incoming migrants find
accommodation in unorganised dwellings.
India’s slums have received global attention
not just from the global NGOs but also in
popular culture through movies like Slumdog
Millionaire,which portray them as centres of
unmitigated squalor and despair. However
poor this quality of life may seem from the
outside, from a migrant slum‐dweller’s
perspective, living there is an entirely rational
decision based on three basic factors:
1. A Higher and More Stable Income. The
productive employment opportunity in the
urban centre will likely generate a higher and
more consistent personal disposable income
than in the place of origin – likely a rural,
farming centre (e.g. being a chauffeur in
Mumbai is a more lucrative and sustainable
job proposition than being a labourer at a
farm, typically a small plot in an un‐
electrified village with erratic water
availability.
2. Social Mobility for the Next Generation.
Raising children in an urban environment
creates a higher “option value” for the next
generation. Typically, cities offers a wider
choice of education and employment
opportunities, and while no parent wishes
their child to grow up in a slum, the chances
that the child could rise to a middle class life
provides a strong incentive to migrate to one
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from the countryside. This contrasts to a child
growing up in a village dominated by a sub‐
scale farm with poor education and
employment opportunities, who is unlikely to
ever have the same social mobility
opportunity.
3. No Other Option. Unfortunately, slums
are the only way to inhabit the city for the
vast majority of migrants. With little
available low‐cost housing of decent quality
near the city centre, a rural migrant would
need to go well outside even the suburbs and
outskirts of the city to be able to afford real
estate. Given the poor transport linkages to
the cities, this can create a significant trade‐
off for migrant in terms of the occupations
that are available and their earnings potential.
As a result, most are willing to compromise
and make the trade‐off to slum housing in the
city to be closer to the place of work.
The coalescing of this process over decades,
with successive waves of migrants and no
exodus of the previous waves leads to slums
growing in scale and scope (see inset on the
phases in slum development). Over time,
informal economies develop in these slums
as they form their own social practices and
codes in the absence of any effective
oversight from the local government. The
larger slums often become a zone for small‐
scale industries by illegally diverting public
resources (water, electricity) to meet their
requirements. These slums also provide
bluecollar
labour for construction, manufacturing, and
other trades.
Clearly, India’s slums are far from their
popular stereotypes as only centres of disease
and want. Indeed, an overwhelming number
of people in these slums have left their homes
in the countryside in the pursuit of
opportunities in urban India because of their
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strong aspirations. Ironically, it is the
informal economy which traps many of these
slum‐dwellers into the vicious cycle of
poverty.
Without real options for their children to
secure competitive standards of schooling
and with the overwhelming number of slum‐
dwellers not trained for the better jobs, social
mobility for this class, though inspiring when
it occurs, is still limited. Further, continuing
urbanisation and slum growth through fresh
arrivals from the countryside increases
competition for limited resources and,
opportunities
further
reducing
both
liveability and individual chances for
mobility. The very presence of slums
ultimately risks creating a different class of
urban citizens who only rarely mix with the
other ‘classes’ other than as employees.
While India’s slums today are full of
ambitious hard workers, lack of opportunity
can quickly institutionalise poverty and
create an unbridgeable gap between poor and
rich.
Although
global
technological
innovation and India’s growth provides its
slum dwellers with access to some of the
modern consumables such as motorcycles,
televisions, and mobile phones, their ability
to shape their own destiny remains limited –
and the productive potential of the young
migrants eager to work is under‐utilised.
However, having established viability and
survived attempts to dismantle the slum,
India’s largest slums like Dharavi, are now in
phase VI, continuous growth through
adaptation. This makes them an organic
entity that has demonstrated its Darwinian
survival status.
Strategies for transforming
India’s slums
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The history of urbanisation is full of
examples of cities which started off by being
the hosts (willingly or not) to the
economically weaker section of the
population who were ultimately graduated
from poor living conditions to a combination
of affordable housing and basic civic
amenities. The solution ultimately lies in
better nations, not just better cities, which are
scalable and capable of not only absorbing
the inflow of people (from within or without),
but in fact are economic magnets in attracting
the best talent from the country. Five insights
provide the basis of the solution.
Firstly, slums are a logical response to
urbanisation and the relative lack of
opportunity outside of major urban centres in
predominantly poor countries. They are
facilitated by the right to migrate. So, they are
a structural phenomenon.
Secondly, slums become a system of living
perpetuated by economics, politics and
societal factors. Therefore, it makes sense to
see them as a part of the system of a country
and also the global system of trade and
distribution of wealth.
Thirdly, people accept and adapt to their
circumstances without (external) triggers to
encourage them to do otherwise. In this
sense, slums are adaptive organisms.
Fourthly, slum dwellers can improve the
slum to a large extent if mobilised to do so.
Therefore, they can also be developed as one
would any organisational entity through the
application of techniques of change
management.
Finally, slum dwellers cannot transform their
slum (into a non‐slum) without the support of
the environment around them. They lack the
critical human and financial resources to
make a clean break from their situation. Their
transformation requires external impetus and
resources. In the absence of this external
intervention,
they
can
become
disenfranchised rather than citizens in‐
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waiting and have the potential to develop a
culture, set of values and behaviours that can
threaten the on‐slum environment they live
in.
“People accept and adapt to their
circumstances without (external) triggers
to encourage them to do otherwise …
slums are adaptive organisms”
Therefore, ultimately, a comprehensive and
long‐term solution to the problem of India’s
slums cannot be about the slums themselves.
A viable solution would have to take a
holistic view dealing with India’s larger
macro challenges and recognise the critical
role which cities will have to play if India is
to successfully transition into a middle‐
income country. Such a solution and would
include the following strategies:
1. Industrial Revolution and Continued
Development. While it was the industrial
revolution which led to a wave of rapid
urbanisation in the West and gave rise to
slums,without the industrial revolution, the
West would not have been able to afford to
develop housing and infrastructure required
for its growing populations. The solution to
slums is not to reverse industrialisation or to
try and contain urbanisation, but indeed to
press forward with it more aggressively so
that businesses can afford to provide jobs to
slum‐dwellers and pay them a proper wage.
2. Knowledge and Freedom Advantage.
India is not fully leveraging its “freedom
advantage” (see our previous paper on China
which highlights the strong link between a
society’s freedom and its development
potential) which should in theory allow for
people to strive to realise their aspirations. In
particular, India needs to create an open
knowledge economy where the slum‐
dwellers are empowered to solve their own
problems and have the access to financing to
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do so. This requires scaled charities and
NGOs that can apply global bestpractices to
tackling India’s urban issues and also raise
the necessary financing.
3. Slum Architecture. Lesson from other
cities indicate that slums are best solved
when housing is horizontal not vertical. In
order to assimilate slum‐dwellers into urban
life instead of further ostracizing them, India
cannot just bulldoze the slums and pile up the
people into apartment blocks. A real solution
would involve building high‐quality, low‐
cost, multi‐storey, diverse formats in the
current areas such that these become
integrated with the rest of the city (as we see
in London or Paris). This needs the best
brains in India and the world to come in and
design the solutions. The slum is merely the
platform for an urban re‐invention.
4. Sustainable Continuous Dynamic
Infrastructure
Provisioning.
The
government needs to create a framework for
gradual and continuous upgrading of slum
infrastructure through innovative public‐
private models and by leveraging the many
dynamic charities and NGOs in India. Such a
model would see the slum‐dwellers become
the driving force of, rather than bystanders to,
the improvement of their living conditions by
empowering them to identify the solution and
then finance and implement it.
5. Rural Re‐Visioning and Investment.
India cannot solve its slum problem by
focusing on the cities alone. Any city which
develops the systems to accommodate more
people and create economic opportunities
will attract a disproportionate number of
migrants putting it under further strain unless
opportunities in rural areas are sufficiently
attractive relative to those in the city.
Therefore a comprehensive solution would
necessarily have to involve improved
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infrastructure,
schools,
employment
opportunities and the overall quality of life in
India’s small towns and rural centres. India’s
countryside has all the potential of a
Switzerland (Kashmir and the Himalayas),
the Caribbean (the many beaches along its
long coast), an African safari (the many
wildlife sanctuaries and forests), and a Gulf
desert trek (Rajasthan’s deserts and palaces)
– however, the
country has barely begun to exploit this
potential.
Case Study: India (Mumbai)
THE DHARAVI SLUM
Dharavi slum is located in Mumbai
(formally Bombay) in India. India‛s and
Mumbai's biggest slum is known as Dharavi.
There are a million people crammed into one
square mile in Dharavi. At the edge of
Dharavi the newest arrivals come to make
their homes on waste land next to water pipes
in slum areas. They set up home illegally
amongst waste on land that is not suitable for
habitation. In the wet monsoon season these
people have huge problems living on this low
lying marginal land. Many of the people here
come from many parts of India as a result of
the push and pull factors of migration.
Conditions in the slum
In the slum people have to live with many
problems. People have to go to the toilet in
the street and there are open sewers. Children
play amongst sewage waste and doctors deal
with 4,000 cases a day of diphtheria and
typhoid. Next to the open sewers are water
pipes, which can crack and take in sewage.
Dharavi slum is based around this water pipe
built on an old rubbish tip. The people have
not planned this settlement and have no legal
rights to the land. There are also toxic wastes
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in the slum including hugely dangerous
heavy metals. Dharavi is made up of 12
different neighbourhoods and there are no
maps or road signs. The further you walk into
Dharavi from the edge the more permanent
and solid the structures become. People live
in very small dwellings (e.g.12X12ft), often
with many members of their extended
families.
Many architects and planners claim this slum
could hold the solution to many of the
problems of the world‛s largest cities. Water
is a big problem for Mumbai's population;
standpipes come on at 5:30am for 2 hours as
water is rationed. These standpipes are shared
between many people. Rubbish is
everywhere and most areas lack sanitation
and excrement and rats are found on the
street. 500 people share one public latrine.
The famous cloth washing area also has
problems, despite its social nature sewage
water filters into the water used for washing
clothes.
The Positives of Dharavi Slum
There are positives; informal shopping areas
exist where it is possible to buy anything you
might need. There are also mosques catering
for people's religious needs. There is a
pottery area of Dharavi slum which has a
community centre. It was established by
potters from Gujarat 70 years ago and has
grown into a settlement of over 10,000
people. It has a village feel despite its high
population density and has a central social
square. Family life dominates, and there can
be as many as 5 people per room. The houses
often have no windows, asbestos roofs
(which are dangerous if broken) and no
planning to fit fire regulations. Rooms within
houses have multiple functions, including
living, working and sleeping. Many daily
chores are done in social spheres because
people live close to one another. This helps to
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generate a sense of community. The
buildings in this part of the slum are all of
different heights and colours, adding interest
and diversity. This is despite the enormous
environmental problems with air and land
pollution. 85% of people have a job in the
slum and work LOCALLY, and some have
even managed to become millionaires.
Recycling and waste in Dharavi
Kevin McCloud found that people seemed
genuinely happy in the slum. However,
toilets are open holes above a river – hardly
hygienic. This could lead to Dengue fever,
cholera and hepatitis Dharavi has a recycling
zone. It is claimed that Dharavi‛s recycling
zone could be the way forward to a
sustainable future. Everything is recycled
from cosmetics and plastics to computer
keyboards. 23% of plastic waste gets
recycled in the UK, in Mumbai it is 80%.
However, it is humans who work to sift the
rubbish in the tips where children and women
sift through the rubbish for valuable waste.
They have to work under the hot sun in
appalling conditions. They earn around a £1
a day for their work. At the edge of the tip the
rag dealers sort their haul before selling it on
to dealers. The quandary is that people have
to work in poor conditions to recycle waste.
From the tip it arrives in Dharavi where it is
processed. It is sorted into wire, electrical
products, and plastics. Plastics in India are
continuously recycled. People work in
dangerous conditions with toxic substances
without protective clothing; this could affect
people‛s life expectancy. Even dangerous
hospital waste is recycled. One private
enterprise makes the metal cages inside
suitcases, making 700 pieces per day, paid 3
rupees per piece. There are 15,000 one room
factories in Dharavi which there are 300
feeding most of Mumbai. Many of the
products from Dharavi end up around the
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world based upon very cheap labour. Many
of the people work in very poor working
conditions, and includes children. Indeed,
Dharavi is trying to do in 20 years what the
west did in 200, develop.
Case Study: Abroad (Sao Paulo,
Brazil)



THE FAVELAS
The Favelas are densely packed informal
settlements made of wood, cardboard,
corrugated iron and other makeshift
materials. Later they are replaced by concrete
block construction. Often only one wall at a
time will be built as a family saves up enough
money to buy materials for the next wall.
Then concrete tiles replace corrugated iron or
other makeshift materials on the roof.
The large-scale improvement in favelas in
São Paulo is due to residents’ expectations of
remaining where they are. This in turn
reflects a change in public policy in the past
20 years, from one of slum removal to one of
slum upgrading.
Attempts to tackle the slum housing
problem
Over time, a range of attempts have been
made to tackle the housing crisis in São
Paulo. These include:


A federal bank (BNH) which funded
urban housing projects and lowinterest loans to lower and middleincome home buyers
A state-level cooperatives institute
(INCOOP) which helped to build
housing for state workers such as
teachers
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A state-level development company
(CODESPAULO) for housing for
low-income families and financing of
slum upgrading projects
A collaborative private sector/state
company scheme (COHAB) to
develop housing for limited-income
families
A municipally managed COHAB for
public housing construction, which
also funded self-help projects
(‘mutiroes’) to upgrade substandard
housing.
During the period 1965 to 1982, over 150,000
housing units were built or upgraded, mostly
through COHAB. Since the early 1980s,
because of cutbacks at federal and state
levels, the public housing burden has fallen
more heavily on the municipality. Due to its
own financial problems the number of
housing units built by the municipality each
year since the mid-1980s has averaged less
than
6,000
a
year.
The administration of leftist mayor Luiza
Erundina (1989–92) tried to speed up public
house building. Here the emphasis was on
self-help housing initiatives, known as
‘mutiroes’. The city supplied funding directly
to community groups. The latter engaged
local families to build new housing or to
renovate existing housing. However, the
annual house building total only increased to
8,000 during this period.
The new strategy
The election of socialist mayor Marta Suplicy
in 2000 marked a change in strategy towards
the housing issue:

The new administration promised to
spend $R3 billion on housing during
its term in office.
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




The 1,000 unfinished Cingapura
housing units were to be completed.
The new strategy would be designed
to obtain maximum impact for
minimum cost.
The concept of the mutiroe (self-help
scheme) was resurrected, assisting
families in self-construction or
upgrading of their own homes.
The house unit cost of self-help
schemes is between $R11,000 and
$R15,000
compared
to
over
$R20,000 for housing units in the
Cingapura Project.
A flagship scheme to alleviate
poverty in favelas is under way in
Santo André (Figure 13).
Occupation of buildings by homeless
In July 2003, more than 4,000 homeless
people occupied four abandoned high-rise
blocks in the centre of São Paulo. Police
prevented the occupation of two other
buildings. This occupation and others was
organised by ‘Movimento Sem Teto do
Centro’ (Movement of Roofless in Centre).
This organisation is protesting about the poor
record of the authorities in tackling the
homeless problem. They are also angry about
the way street sellers are treated, with the
authorities confiscating their goods because
they are trading without licenses. For many
homeless families and others, street selling is
their only source of income.
Conclusion
Brazil has a greater disparity in income levels
than most other countries. This impacts on
housing and all other aspects of the quality of
life. The occupation of buildings by homeless
people is an illustration of the social tensions
that such a wide income disparity can bring.
It can be argued that housing is the biggest
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problem that São Paulo and Brazil in general
has to tackle.
CONCLUSION
All the strategies described above on their
own can transform the slums. However, if
implemented together, they could represent a
sea change in the way that world’s mass
migration and resulting urbanisation is
managed. This requires a recognition that the
reason why slums in India persist and
continue to expand is because of the failure
to address fundamental issues of economic
opportunity across the country, population
growth, urban and rural development and
education and skills development. A middle
income India will indeed demand world‐class
cities and conversely, to reach middle income
levels, India needs to create opportunity for
the population to be gainfully employed.
Given India is already in the midst of a rocky
economic cycle at the same time as slums are
growing at the edge of every major city, the
investment in urban infrastructure can create
a highly positive multiplier effect for the
economy while addressing a major issue.
There is no single point in time or crisis
which will tell us that India’s cities have
suddenly become “un‐livable”; however if
the status quo prevails for the next 20 years,
they will get progressively more chaotic and
at some stage in the not‐too‐distant future, it
will be impossible to harness the economic
potential of India’s population without even
more radical changes than those outlined
above. Addressing this issue is one of the key
steps in the regeneration of the India story
and will have a highly positive impact on the
success of the next government. Indeed,
solving the issue is about as difficult as
putting a man on the moon, but would have
massive collateral benefits for the nation as a
whole and would be a true indicator that India
is truly ready to play its role on the global
stage.
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Journal for Studies in Management and Planning
Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/index.php/JSMaP
e-ISSN: 2395-0463
Volume 01 Issue 10
November 2015
“Solving the issue is about as difficult as
putting a man on the moon, but would have
massive collateral benefits for the nation as a
whole and would be a true indicator that India
is truly ready to play its role on the global
stage.”
REFERENCES
[1]
http://www.indiaonlinepages.com/po
pulation/slumpopulationinindia.html
[2]
McKinsey,
India’s
Urban
Awakening, 2010
[3]
Deccan Herald, “Dharavi Self‐
Created Special Economic Zone for the
Poor”, 2011
[4]
Sussane Wendt(1997), Dissertation
for phd, Slum and Squatter settlements in
Dhaka
[5]
Kevin McCloud, Slumming It
Available online: http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/
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