What is the future of the ‘Megaslums’?
Throughout the world, it is estimated that there may be up to 200,000 slums. These range from slums containing a few hundred to some which house as many as a million people. [Planet of the Slums: 2006: 26] It is these ‘Megaslums’, in particular the great slum capitals of South Asia which my essay will focus upon.
Since their birth these “Metropolises” have grown exponentially and today this trend shows no sign of letting up. Swallowing up the hundreds that flock to them every day beneath their endless canopy of corrugated rusted metal sheets. With many of these slums now staring at the possibility of redevelopment, I will explore the implications facing them by comparing Dharavi, a slum considered
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As Leebbus Woods describes them “One slum. Four layers. Four realities. On the ground floor is misery. One floor up is work. Another floor up is politics. And at the top is hope.” This ‘ground floor of misery’ is slowly becoming darker as the self-built homes loom over the web of narrow dimly lit alleys below. Looking into the future, one can only see Dharavi nailing the lid on its own coffin, as shanties become so compressed that Dharavi cocoons itself in sheet …show more content…
Its 590 acres would be divided into 5 sectors of development that would then be open for domestic and international firms to bid for. It has even been referred to as the “Opportunity of the Millennium” [Environment and Urbanization: 2009 21: 241] The Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) hopes companies can take advantage of Dharavi’s high land value by constructing quality commercial space for the squatters to purchase in an open market system. In exchange for this, these firms would have to provide Dharavi’s residents with free flats and small commercial spaces in a multi-storey building setup.
Many of the slum dwellers argue that a government intervention will ‘break down the whole chain’. [Slums: Hope and Misery: 2011] Mohamad Sheikh in Lebbeus Woods account of Dharavi explains, “The businesses work because Dharavi attracts cheap labour. If there is a redevelopment, they will not get a room so cheap. They will not come back here”. This statement underlines how finely poised the situation in Dharavi is. Any development clearly needs to be well considered to ensure the cogs that make the shantytown tick, are not
Lora Jo Foo. “The Yale Law Journal”, Vol. 103, No. 8, Symposium: The Informal Economy
While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.
Shantytowns are defined as urban slums “perched on hillside outskirts of most cities” (Sanabria, 2007, p.25) in Latin America. Common characteristics of shantytowns include run-down buildings, poor infrastructure, lack of space, high population, risk of disease, low education level, and a great lack of job opportunities (pp.24-6). These ghettos are home to the poor and socially-outcast, especially first and second generation migrants from rural areas (pp.24-5).
In the movie “The Real Slumdogs” the many people of Dharavi work hard to survive in their slum. There are many businesses and other ways to make a living all in this very small area. Some examples of work in this slum are sorting garbage to find plastic to recycle, making pottery, and cooking bread to sell to the masses. Dharavi has a population around one million people. This is a large amount of people who rely on Dharavi as a place to live, learn, and earn a living. The conflict theory that presented itself in this movie is that wealthy people have put a very large price on the real estate Dharavi
“Understanding people who are homeless also plays a very important role – as many poor people who are being provided homes through government schemes are renting their homes to others and they are going back to their previous dwellings (slums/huts). The solution to slums is not to evict people, or to eradicate the dwellings, but to create conditions so that people can improve their own dwellings, with the assistance of the community. One of the best ways to do that is by giving slum-dwellers security of tenure, so they know they are protected against arbitrary, unfair, or illegal eviction. If people know that, even if they only make a couple of hundred dollars a year, which many people do, they'll spend money improving their house that they wouldn't otherwise do if they were afraid of being evicted. If governments acted in partnership with people in this way, many good things could
Mike Davis in his book Planet of Slums, discusses the Third World and the impact globalization and industrialization has on both urban and poverty stricken cities. The growth of urbanization has not only grown the middle class wealth, but has also created an urban poor who live side by side in the city of the wealthy. Planet of Slums reveals astonishing facts about the lives of people who live in poverty, and how globalization and the increase of wealth for the urban class only hurts those people and that the increase of slums every year may eventually lead to the downfall of the earth. “Since 1970 the larger share of world urban population growth has been absorbed by slum communities on the periphery of Third World cities” (Davis 37). Specifically,
Set in the slums of India’s Mumbai district, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo guides readers into the undercity of Annawadi. Separated from the flourishing world city merely by “a coconut-tree-lined thoroughfare”(Boo 68) and billboards, illegally residing residents of Annawadi lives and stories are documented by Boo during her stay. As residents acclimate to her presence, they continue with their daily lives, and her work follows. From the female slumlord who dreams to hold power to the young boy with his head in the clouds, Behind displays the hopes that even the poorest and richest people have: to be better than their surroundings. But below these aspirations lies darker routes to success, including corruption. Forevers warns
In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo tells the stories and struggles of families living in a slum adjacent to the Sahar Airport in Mumbai, India. Boo details the ways in which the residents of this slum, Annawadi, attempt to escape their poverty, but fail to do so. Despite numerous initiatives sponsored by the Central Government of India to improve the lives of the many individuals living in Annawadi, these programs are ultimately unable to do so due to deep-rooted corruption in the city of Mumbai. Regardless of this, the residents of Annawadi seem to accept corruption as a fact of life, and do little to fight it. As illustrated over the course of Boo’s narrative, this results from the fact that many Annawadians recognize the ways in which the laws of their society allow for the unfair treatment of certain groups of people, especially the poor and religious minorities, and are also cognizant of the fact that they have no real power to change a system that
In order to understand why Whitty’s argument is effectively communicated it must be noted that this article was published in the politically progressive magazine, Mother Jones. The audience of Mother Jones mostly consists of young adults, mostly women, who want to be informed on the corruptness of the media, the government and the corporate world. In order to be fully effective in presenting her points, Whitty starts her article by creating a gloomy imagery through her story of the city of Calcutta and the hard lives which its citizens live. Through her use of words such as “broken down…. Smoky streets” to describe the scene at Calcutta, she is able to create this gloomy image. She ties this gloomy story to how the population of Calcutta is the reason for the harsh living environment and how immense its population density is when compared to cities like New York. Additionally, she discusses how the increase in population has caused harsh lives for individuals in the Himalayas, the rest of India and the rest of the world. Through these examples she ties the notion that the root causes of such hard lives are because of the “dwindling of resources and escalating pollution,” which are caused by the exponential growth of humankind. She goes on to
For example people living in Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, who have poor housing conditions with poor schools and lack of employment opportunities, may be denied to other opportunities which other sections of society posses. Banks might refuse loan opportunities due to lack of collaterals, insurance companies might reject their applications, or an opportunity of employment might be taken away from a deserving person due to personal and past records. It can also be possible that people themselves might exclude themselves from society’s mainstream. Individuals might drop out of education or turn down a job opportunity or due to lack of confidence, self-esteem and self-value. This might happen due to interaction between human agency and responsibility or social forces might shape people’s views and situations. (Giddens,
The problem however, with these “renewal projects” is that the implemented changes are never usually intended to benefit the long time inhabitants of these communities, these changes are intended usually, to push out the element of poverty that exists in many of these communities (which is a direct result of decades of neglect) in exchange for the opportunity to cater to a more affluent (usually less “ethnic”) demographic. In laymen’s terms, city planners, elected officials, prospective businesses, and even law enforcement, all converge for the purpose of removing poor people from an area by simply making it too pleasant and by exten...
This is necessary as the vast majority of individuals migrating from rural to urban centers has been steadily increasing with the level of economic growth seen within the past twenty years as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this situation has further shown the structural issues and inequalities of cities, as most migrants end up having a poor quality of life living in informal settlements as highlight substantially by Boo. As a means of tackling this, however, the Indian government has turned its focus on investing rural regions, developing the agricultural sector. Specifically, Boo mentions that “the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had come down from Delhi to express his concern for the farmers’ hardships, and the central government’s determination to relieve it” (p. 138). While this is definitely important funds are not being divided justly. For starters, between rural and urban areas almost all investments are being targeting towards rural regions, which is only addressing issues of inequality in one section of the country. Furthermore, across rural areas inequalities of investment are quite often overlooked. Although, “one of the governments hopes was to stop villagers from abandoning their farms and further inundating cities like Mumbai, but Asha’s relatives knew nothing of these celebrated relief programs” (p. 138). Therefore, even though
Wilson, W.J. (1996). From Instituional to Jobless Ghettos. In R.T. Legates, & F. Stout (Eds.). The City Reader (pp. 110-119). New York, NY: Routledge.
...he squatter camps of the city which they are living. Moreover slums are also the source of all kinds of social evils such as drugs and prostitution because of the lowest security.
...population distribution designed to reduce the rate of rural-urban migration appears to have had limited success in many developing countries. Policies must be directed at altering the rural economy in order to slow the rate of urban sprawl. Broad land use planning and changing of planning standards and governmental procedures would go a long way to reduce many of the problems that face urban populations in the developing areas, especially Africa. Urbanization can cause a lot of problems for a city or even a country. It can cause cities to become overpopulated which are known as mega-cites, and cause problems with living arrangements and finding a job. Urbanization can also cause health problems. Urbanization is supposed to be good for developing countries on the rise but with this rapid growth in Africa, these problems can become a major concern in the future.