Article 2 - Global Slum Upgrading Practices

• In the last 20 years slum upgrading has increasingly been regarded as the most effective method for mitigating the problems faced by slum dwellers (UN-habitat, 2010)
• The goal of slum upgrading is to integrate the communities into their larger urban context
• The outcomes of slum upgrading are usually experienced at the level of the individual, neighbourhood and urban housing
• Types of interventions dealing with slum improvements

  • Negligence (Benign neglect, laissez fair)
  • Eviction and clearance
  • In-situ upgrading
  • Enabling policies
  • Resettlement
• Policies that aim at benign neglect, forced eviction, clearance and involuntary resettlements have become very unpopular
• Forced eviction and clearance model

  Based on the concept of redevelopment of slums and requires the resettlement of its residents
• Evidence of slum eviction practices

  • 1,512 households (about 5000 persons) evicted from Ejipura, Bangalore, South Africa
  • About 10,000 people evicted in Johannesburg between 2002 and 2006
  • Operation Murambatsvina (Restore Order) in Harare, Zimbabwe in 2005 - 92,460 houses demolished and 700,000 people displaced
• Eviction experiences in Lagos, Nigeria


  • Over 700,000 inhabitants evicted from their residences in the past two and half decades
  • Maroko - 300,000 residents forcibly evicted in 1990
  • Badia - residents suffered eviction in 2013
  • Makoko - over 3,000 residents suffered eviction in 2005 and 2012
• Adverse consequences and impacts of forced eviction

  • Further entrenches the poverty of the residents by removing their homes and destroying the frameworks they had established
  • Housing problem of the urban poor becomes significantly worse as evacuees are compelled to relocate to other slum environments, reinforcing the cycle of slum development
  • Socially destructive, with great economic cost to the community
  • Destruction of housing investments or fixed capital made by the residents, leaving the affected households systematically impoverished
  • Loss of social and safety networks, family disintegration, psychological and emotional trauma which may lead to death
• Slum clearance is widely unpopular today and is now rarely pursued
• UN-Habitat recommends that slum clearance option can only be applied if in-situ upgrading is not possible and not wanted by the affected community (for example, in cases of hazardous locations)
• The resettlement process leads to all affected households living in adequate houses with no one being worse-off than before
• Slum upgrading


  Physical, social, economic, organizational and environmental improvements to the present informal settlements and slums
• Results of slum upgrading

  • Improvement of basic infrastructure
  • Removal of environmental hazards
  • Improving access to health care and education
  • Improving opportunities for income earning
• Slum upgrading in the 1980's developed from the works of John Turner
• Upgrading Programs


  Locality-based improvement strategies designed to address the various degrees of obsolescence and decay in slum areas through the production or improvement of basic services and physical infrastructure
• Advantages of slum upgrading over previous methods

  • Minimum loss of physical assets and disruption of livelihoods and social support systems
  • Cheaper than clearance or relocation (up to 10 times less)
  • Avoids social and economic disruption of the community
  • Results are highly visible within a short span of time
• In-situ slum upgrading


  Improvement of existing settlements, including upgrading existing dilapidated roads or foot paths, providing public toilets or bathrooms, sinking boreholes to provide water, building new schools and upgrading old ones, building health facilities, empowering the youths through skill acquisition, and building capacity
• The performance of in-situ slum upgrading depends on the severity of distortions in land and credit market, and the policy initiatives to correct them
• The site and services approach to slum upgrading was not particularly successful due to lack of access to housing finance
• Participatory slum upgrading


  Community participation is essential to achieve better development outcomes
• Examples of participatory slum upgrading

  • Occupants of many informal settlements in Aleppo, Syria were able to successfully install relatively sophisticated waterborne sewerage systems with no formal technical assistance and at no capital cost to the state
  • Cooperative Housing Foundation in Ghana utilized community builders as a self-help strategy
• The concept of participatory upgrading was not popular during the 1970's and 1980's, as planners merely assumed what they believed were user's needs and demands, with little or no consultation</b>
• Strong local organizations such as Churches, Mosques and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) should be in place to implement participatory slum upgrading programs
• Every model of slum upgrading has its weaknesses and challenges
• Weaknesses and challenges of slum upgrading

  • Politicization of slum upgrading program
  • Coordination problem among stakeholders
  • Lack of security of tenure
  • Insufficient funding
  • Lack of technical capacity
  • Lack of community participation
  • Lack of political will
  • Lack of institutional framework
  • Lack of monitoring and evaluation
  • Lack of sustainability
  • Lack of scalability
• Politicization of slum upgrading program


  The selection of beneficiaries presents challenges as policy makers seek to balance priorities, issues of political patronage and the potential for corruption
• The criteria for choosing locations for slum upgrading can be administrative, political, technical, due to strategic planning or due to other factors
• Varied political, cultural and religious inclinations among various stakeholders in the slum are in conflict and a major drawback to the program, as they slow down decision making
• Coordination problem among stakeholders frequently occurs at the inter-agency level of government
• Factors affecting slum upgrading programs in developing countries

  • Politicization of slum upgrading program
  • Misconceptions and Negative Perceptions
  • Planning Design and Institutional Issues
  • Land and Tenure Matters
  • Complexity of Evaluation Techniques
  • Credibility of Participating NGOs
  • Slum and Residents of Slum are not Homogenous
  • Socio-Cultural and Socio-Economic Issues
  • Weak financial Mechanism
  • Environmental Degradation
  • Maintenance
• Politicization of slum upgrading program

  Selection of beneficiaries for existing slum upgrading presents challenges as policy makers seek to balance priorities, issues of political patronage and the potential for corruption
• Criteria for choosing locations for slum upgrading

  • Administrative
  • Political
  • Technical
  • Due to strategic planning
  • Due to other factors
• The ultimate selection of locations for slum upgrading reflects both regional and complicated decision-making process
• Varied political, cultural and religious inclinations among various stakeholders in the slum are in conflict and slow down decision making
• Co-ordination problem among stakeholders at inter-agency level of government and at community level in the form of elite control, elite capture and corruption
• Slum improvement progress is related to political survival strategies meant to manipulate the poor among slum dwellers for selfish reasons
• Misconceptions and Negative Perceptions

  Slums and upgrading are not generally well understood, public interventions address the symptoms rather than the underlying causes
• Slum dwellers' ignorance, lack of knowledge and skills to cope with challenges disadvantages slum upgrading initiatives
• Lack of information, coupled with the general failure of several past slum upgrading projects to benefit the majority of the targeted slum dwellers has led to a general distrust towards the project