Slumming it

As politicians, planners and academics struggle to comprehend how metropolises can cope with up to 60 new arrivals per hour – either newborns or immigrants – a group of researchers at the London School of Economics has attempted to map how three cities are managing.

The book "Living in the Endless City" concentrates on three fast-growing megacities: Istanbul, Mumbai and Sao Paulo.

Despite being home to several crowded cities, India is slower than China, for example, in transitioning to an urban majority. The population of the greater metropolitan area of Mumbai has already reached approximately 20 million.

One million of them are estimated to live in the world's biggest slum, Dharavi.

World's biggest slum

Officials plan to spend more than $2 billion (about 1.5 billion euros) to knock down the settlement, which is adjacent to prime central business district land.

City chiefs envisage that a modern suburb will take its place, with proper housing, schools, hospitals and shopping centers.

Many urban planning academics think the proposals will only move the problem of shanty towns elsewhere.

"I'm totally anti," says Professor Ricky Burdett, co-editor of the book.

"It's exactly the wrong thing to do, because it's demolishing an environment which has a million people, who have lived there for now 40 or 50 years," Burdett told Deutsche Welle, adding that Dharavi communities have their own functional economy, retail activities and even a type of legal system.

Istanbul, a city that has grown from a population of 1.2 million in 1950 to nearly 13 million in 2010, has also seen hundreds of thousands of residents from informal settlements displaced.

A 2002 city-wide housing policy led to more than a dozen slums being demolished, with new housing taking their place, built for Turkey's new middle class.

Similarly, residents who moved to Dharavi before 2000 are likely to be resettled to other parts of Mumbai.

Brazil shows the way

Burdett says dismantling slums, however unsightly, won't make them disappear.

"You can't just wipe everything clean and get rid of slums, you can't… people will continue coming."

Burdett suggests retrofitting the slums, pointing to an ongoing process like this in South America.

"You provide the sanitation, you bring the water, you bring the electricity," and down the line makeshift residences can be made more sturdy and permanent.

Sao Paulo is a place where retrofitting has worked, he says. Favela (or shantytown) dwellers, who contributed to the city's 8,000 percent growth rate since the beginning of the 20th century, formed their own activist groups and lobbied the city authorities for better local services, including running water and electricity.

They've even convinced the local municipality to collect their garbage, despite the slums having no legal status.

Wide-reaching impact

Canadian journalist Doug Saunders has traveled to several of the world's fastest-growing cities for his book "Arrival City," which describes the poorest suburbs – often on a city's margins – where immigrants first unpack.

Saunders believes the 21st century will be remembered for the completion of a massive shift from agricultural to urban living, which will of course have a wide-reaching impact on all humanity.

"First of all, it is what will end poverty in the world," Saunders asserts. He thinks people moving to cities will result in a "decimal point shift in quality of life," for example longevity, infant mortality, poverty rates, malnutrition rates, HIV-AIDS susceptibility, empowerment of women and more.

Saunders, who is originally from Canada and works as a foreign correspondent for the Globe and Mail, also thinks urbanization will end the world's population crisis.

"Urban families tend to have family sizes that are well below the population growth rate," he said.

London School of Economics researchers claim that local democracy is often the single largest factor in determining whether the poorest residents of a city succeed at integrating into society.

Metropolitan areas with strong local officials have made the most gains in developing city infrastructures, including sewer networks, local amenities and public transport, in order to cope with the influx of new residents, they say.

Professor Burdett thinks officials in India, China and Africa can learn from the strides made by Colombian cities like Bogota and Medellin, where it is generally accepted that quality of life has dramatically improved thanks to effective local government.

City-bound

Saunders was inspired by individual experiences of rural to urban migration for his book.

"I had a vision that I would go to a village somewhere and find a family that are getting onto a train with all their belongings and moving to a city…but it never happens this way," he said.

"At first, individuals from the village go seasonally to the city for work, living often in the most dire quarters."

These urban wages quickly become the largest source of income in the village, with some of the members of the family finding ways of staying in the city permanently.

For the lucky ones, their new home city won't become their enemy, bulldozing makeshift homes before the communities can begin to evolve into a new middle class.

Governments should do their best not to ignore these migrants, warns Saunders, as these same arrival cities can turn into a hotbed of violence and extremism if social issues are left to fester.

Author: Nik Martin / sad
Editor: Nathan Witkop