Slum upgrading
"[1] The main objective of slum upgrading is to rehabilitate them into functional neighborhoods by addressing the social needs of the community, and improving integration into the formal urban economy.
Many slums lack basic local authority services such as provision of safe drinking water, wastewater, sanitation, and solid-waste management.
[3] While much of this growth has come as a result of population explosion, mass migration from rural areas to the cities has accounted for a huge portion of this worldwide urbanization.
[4] However, people began to recognize housing as a basic need, requiring more invasive measures and thus giving rise to the idea of slum upgrading[4]).
In 1972, John F. C. Turner published his book, Freedom to Build, in which he argued for a theoretical strategy to solve the problem of slums.
[7] Slum upgrading proved easier and cheaper and without the public relations nightmare that comes with pictures of housing developments getting bulldozed.
However, that number is expected to rise to two billion by the year 2030,[9] and the policy of slum upgrading will not affect the mass migration of the rural poor to the cities.
[7] According to the 2006/2007 UN-HABITAT State of the World's Cities Report, the countries of Egypt, South Africa, Mexico, Tunisia, and Thailand stand out in their efforts towards slum upgrading.
[10] According to Habitat for Humanity International some common barriers to slum upgrades are: [11] In cities such as Mexico City, Mexico, the local government has installed a program which prohibits the driving of certain cars on certain days of the week, depending on color-coded stickers assigned based on license plate numbers.
[12] This has reduced the pollution levels in Mexico City drastically and has greatly increased the quality of life and safety of the air for all inhabitants, even though it is still at a level, which scientists say, is equivalent to smoking half a pack of cigarettes per day because of the still vast number of cars and unregulated industry, releasing masses of pollutants into the Mexico city air.
These families all had the opportunity to attend courses on how to improve other aspects of their lives specifically their health, education, and finances.
This model achieved the stated objective of reduction/elimination of the slum population in that area by almost 1,000 homes while improving other aspects of the families' day-to-day lives.
[14] The Marins-Pecheurs project, which was implemented by The Most Clearing House organization in Agadir, Morocco, aimed to relocate families living in slums with minimal social disruption.
The project created small row houses and apartments for sale and rent to squatters near their current site in Agadir.
Migrant workers coming to Beijing are met with the threat of their homes and abodes simply being demolished in an effort to keep the number of slums down.
Under the program, urban poor groups map out the shelter needs in their communities, and can access infrastructure subsidies and housing loans to upgrade their homes.
[20] However, this raises tremendous difficulties when trying to figure out which land to buy, since slums are (by definition) so densely populated that some houses are literally on top of one another, making it difficult to bring any sense of organization to the areas.
Commonwealth Bank has attempted to separate land ownership deeds and the actual development of infrastructure, but this creates whole new problems of its own.
After all, if ownership is not clearly established, owners and workers of large corporations are often unlikely to pay for the utilities they receive as a result of the slum upgrading projects.
Developing nations cannot afford to provide free utilities for an extended period of time, so this creates a huge problem for attempts at slum upgrading.
