How many ways can you say slums?

• Favelas (Brazil)
• Barrios (Venezuala)
• Ghettos (USA)
• Gers (Mongolia)
• Bastis / Bustees (India)
• Kampungs (Indonesia)
• Tugurios (Latin America)
• Katchi Abadis (Pakistan)
• Intra-muros (Morocco)
• Gegi Condu (Turkey)
• Bidonvilles (Burkina Faso)
• Shantytowns (South Africa)
• Squatter settlements (Global)

What are they?

Slums are overcrowded, poor suburbs and settlements with limited access to water, sanitation, sewerage, electricity and services such as clinics, schools, police and fire stations. (In irregular slums in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific, only 7% of households have connections to sewerage systems. Only 3% of households of slums in Sub-Saharan Africa have access to telephones. Only 20% have access to piped water connections and only 40% have drinkable water within 200 metres of the household.)

1 billion people (or 1/6th of humanity) currently live in slums and the UN reckons that by 2030, 2 billion people will live in slums.

Location, location, location

Many slums are bulldozed to make way for regular settlements or other development. Because many slum dwellers don’t have the legal right to occupy the land they live on, there’s nothing they can do except move and start again.

Most slum dwellers and pay rent. Rents are often higher per square metre than for regular accommodation, and the rents take up more of people’s income.

The largest slum in the world is Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Over 80,000 people make their homes on “Smoky Mountain”, Manila’s largest garbage dump (in the Philippines). Smoky Mountain gets its name from the constant smoke and fumes from burning garbage. Most people work here as scavengers and scrap sorters.

It’s not all doom and gloom
Slums have been a vibrant birthplace for new musical and artistic expression and have given the world: jazz, blues, rock and roll, reggae, funk, rap, hiphop, fado and flamenco.

Nigerian Afro-punk pioneer, Fela Kuti (great site - popups warning), comes from an urban slum background.

The recent award-winning film from Brazilian film-maker Fernando Mereilles, City of God, is set in a slum.