INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS

Learning Objectives

1. To understand the concept of urban informality and its spatial manifestations, and the key debates surrounding informal settlements.

2. To understand the challenges faced by communities living in informal settlements.

3. To understand the different approaches to community-led upgrading of informal settlements.

4. To understand the relevance of land policies, their impact upon the lives of low-income urban dwellers, and the tools that can be used to address land issues in the context of community-led urban upgrading.

Overview

The dominant shelter approach undertaken by the urban poor in the developing world is selfbuilt housing located in informal settlements. These are also referred to as slums, spontaneous settlements, and squatter settlements; as well as a multitude of locally specific names such as Favelas in Brazil and Kampung in Indonesia. They are predominantly residential environments that are typically developed outside official planning and building regulation processes. Where conditions allow, over many decades initial precarious “shacks” are consolidated into durable, permanent houses (Figure 1). Such consolidation is motivated by occupants’ needs and wants and permitted (or not) by the degree of security of land tenure, political stability and the occupants’ economic capabilities.

characteristics: access to improved water; access to improved sanitation; sufficient living area; durability of housing; and security of tenure (UN-Habitat, 2003). To complement these five characteristics, “occupation and construction frequently take place simultaneously; and... such places are usually in a process of dynamic change and demonstrate considerable ingenuity and creativity within limited resource constraints” (Kellett, 2005).

Estimates indicate that nearly one billion people currently live in informal settlements (Un-Habitat, 2003). While the percentage of the population living in informal settlements in developing countries has decreased over the past two decades, the absolute number of informal settlement dwellers has increased due to continued urbanisation

Informal settlements are far from homogenous (Environment and Urbanization, 1989). They vary in many ways including in: urban location and physical characteristics (Davis, 2006); outlook for the future and capacity for social mobility (Stokes, 1962); past origins and future orientation (Portes, 1971); and their structure and land tenure arrangements (Ward, 1976).

Although a “dangerous” word according to Gilbert (2007), UN-Habitat (2016) uses the term “slum” when referring to informal settlements. A slum is defined as lacking one or more of the following five and population growth. Projections indicate that informal settlements will become home to more than two billion people by 2050.

Key issues in informal settlements

Common to all informal settlements is insufficient or non-existent infrastructure, services, and sanitation, especially during their formative years. Formal municipal services such as potable water, electricity, sewage and solid waste collection are limited, irregular or non-existent. Residents cope by “tapping” electricity; sourcing potable water by tanker truck delivery, wells or communal standpipes; and disposing of human waste using “flying toilets”, or self-built septic tanks and long-drops.

Land tenure insecurity is a key issue that has multiple effects on the daily lives of residents. It results in a constant threat of eviction. This means that residents are reluctant to invest in housing improvements. It makes them vulnerable to slum landlordism and exploitation by land-owners, and by those in political office. Not having an official address or given physical location can constrain access to other services, such as education and healthcare. These effects further exacerbate the precarious living conditions and reinforce residents’ socio-economic exclusion [link to module 3. Social Exclusion).

Informal settlements are often located on hazardous, marginal land such as steep hillsides, river deltas, flood plains, and toxic and unhygienic sites. Such localities are vulnerable to landslides, flooding, industrial health hazards, and natural hazards; including the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels. Crime, violence and high levels of formal unemployment lead to further stigmatisation of these areas and their residents. The built environment of informal settlements is often very dense and can lack open / public space for recreation and amenity.

The cumulative result of these conditions is severe challenges for residents in terms of their health and wellbeing, socio-economic exclusion, and vulnerability. Informal settlements are a clear violation of the right to adequate housing [link to module 2. Theoretical Frameworks]. However, although one must be careful not to romanticise what are very challenging conditions, there are also aspects that can be considered positive. Residents may take great pride in their self-built environments and do not always see or value the “problems” in the same way outsiders do. They are often active agents in shaping their environments even in the face of severe constraints. Many informal settlement residents often have strong kinship and community organisation structures that guide settlement management and development, including for example community-led savings groups, management and operation of community resources and services.

Approaches to informal settlements

The policy and practice approaches to dealing with informal settlements have changed significantly over time. The historical trajectory of approaches to informal settlements can be broadly divided into four overall phases: Eradication, Replacement, Facilitation, and Upgrading1

Eradication: The rapid urbanisation in developing countries from the 1940s onwards brought about a vast expansion of urban informal settlements. Self-built slums were viewed as social pathologies and a physical manifestation of the failure of governments to provide for their citizens (Chambers, 2005). The response was to eradicate the unsightly slums and stem the flow of a “suffering mass of humanity displaced from the rural areas to the filthy peripheries of the great cities” (Lerner, 1967, p.33).

Replacement: With continued urbanisation, the focus changed to replacing slums with “appropriate”, formal housing. This took the form of large-scale, multi-storied, government-led housing developments. With the exception of Singapore and Hong Kong, such housing was unsuccessful for many social and economic reasons. The housing was costly to construct and maintain; supply could not keep up with demand; designs did not respond to occupants’ dwelling needs and values; and they were too expensive to secure and maintain for the urban poor (Gilbert and Gugler, 1992). Therefore, informal settlements continued to expand even under repression by authorities.

Facilitation: A major paradigm shift occurred in the late 1960s. Self-built housing was increasingly championed as the solution rather than the problem. According to John Turner, housing was to be viewed as a verb (what housing does) rather than a noun (the product) (Turner, 1976). It was argued that collective social organisations and self-builders produced superior housing than heavy, bureaucratic governments because selfbuilt housing matched the occupants’ needs and capabilities. Despite criticism of the approach2, the self-help paradigm greatly informed housing policy and practice. Government responses switched from large-scale housing projects to “supporting the poor to help themselves”, manifested in “sites and services” schemes where a plot of land and a basic serviced sanitation core were provided and the occupants were to, over time, build their houses. However, uptake for “site and service” schemes was low due to high maintenance and service costs, and informal settlement dwellers preferring central, informal locations to peripheral sites.

Upgrading: The focus from the mid-1980s shifted to improving informal settlements through in-situ upgrading. Rather than focusing on housing, the urban physical conditions of informal settlements were upgraded through the provision of paved roads, drainage and basic urban services. In-situ upgrading reflects a movement during the 1980s and 1990s towards neo-liberal orthodoxies, most clearly manifested in “enablement strategies”. The role of governments as direct housing providers was further reduced. Upgrading has been criticised on grounds that it is overly expensive due to sitespecific implementation; is often piecemeal and does not address the city as a whole; can result in gentrification, pushing the really poor outwards; and does not address the root causes of urban poverty and socio-economic exclusion.

Upgrading informal settlements today

The past decade has seen a new paradigm emerge which posits the need for a citywide hybrid approach that incorporates three elements (United Nations, 2017). First, it promotes a citywide approach to upgrading informal settlements, viewing the city as an ecosystem whereby all informal settlements should be recognised, documented and incorporated into an overall citywide strategy and plan for upgrading. Second, it promotes a multiyear, programmatic approach to upgrading, aiming for structural change and to avoid the limitations of piecemeal, ad-hoc upgrading projects. Third, it adopts a “twin-track approach” whereby new affordable land and housing supply is promoted to stem the growth of existing informal settlements and stop new informal settlements emerging.

As part of this overall approach, there is broad consensus that informal settlement upgrading must be undertaken in a participatory manner [link to module 11. Participation]. The residents of target settlements should be involved as meaningful partners in the full project cycle, including from the early stages of mapping and problem identification, to action planning as well as implementation [link to module 14. Project Cycle and module 2. Theoretical Frameworks]. A participatory approach, however, is not only a “grassroots” approach; it also requires the involvement of a wide array of stakeholders at central and local government levels, including utility providers, city planning offices, and social service providers.