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Slum Upgrading
Today the global slum population is estimated at almost a billion persons, accounting for one-third of the urban population in Asia, over one-half in Africa and approximately one-quarter in Latin America. These figures are projected to double over the next 25 years, possibly resulting in the majority of urban dwellers worldwide by 2030 being marginalized slum dwellers.
There remains much controversy about what characterizes a slum, with substantial regional difference driving the current debate. In general though, slums are informal settlements that lack access to basic services such as clean water and sanitation, and are typically characterized by exposure to unsanitary conditions with excrement and open sewage pooling along unpaved walkways. Slums are usually high density and have an insufficient number of quality schools and health clinics. Despite these daily hardships, slums are also places of community with vibrant economic and entrepreneurial activities.
Slum upgrading consists of physical, social, economic, and environmental improvements that are done in partnership with citizens, community groups, businesses, and local authorities. These improvements often focus on introducing or improving basic service provision, mitigating environmental hazards, regularizing security of tenure, providing incentives for community management and maintenance, and improving access to health care and education.
Local and national governments can create an enabling environment to encourage slum upgrading through a variety of actors, the foremost being the urban poor themselves. Some key government actions that facilitate slum upgrading include:
- Explicit provision of secure tenure to slum residents;
- Inexpensive, user-friendly system for land titling;
- Community contracting to implement small infrastructure works in slums;
- Building code reforms to enable incremental building by slum dwellers;
- Well-targeted incentives to encourage the local private sector to move down market to begin serving the poor's credit needs, including providing micro-credit for progressive building;
- Consistent implementation of policy that is enforceable at the local and national levels; and
- Public-private partnerships with slum dwellers to improve community living conditions, open lines of communication, and build trust and accountability among government authorities, local businesses, and the urban poor.
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