Slums of Hope or Slums of Despair?

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A slum is defined by the United Nations as “a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security.” Mumbai and Rio de Janerio are home to some of the largest and well-known slums in the world, with over 7 million of Mumbai’s 14 million inhabitants and 4 million of Rio’s 12 million inhabitants living in slums. One of the United Nations top priorities is to decrease the number of people living in slums because they are seen as a hindrance to urban population growth; so are they slums of despair, or slums of hope? The growth of slums (or favelas as they are known in South America) is due to rapid rural to urban migration in LEDC’s but more noticeably in BRIC’s. Thousands of rural people migrate to cities such as Mumbai and Rio de Janerio each week, but when they reach the city there isn’t any housing available that they can afford. So instead the migrants find whatever materials they can find and build their homes on any undeveloped land even though it does not belong to them. This leads to the first issue; slums have a very high population density. Dharavi (a slum in Mumbai) has 600,000 people living in an area only 2km²; this creates a very poor quality of life as large families are squashed into one or two room shacks with barely enough room for everyone to sleep, and a toilet is shared by around 400 people. The situation is similar in Rio de Janerio; although the favela housing here is of a higher standard than Mumbai slums, (most homes have electricity and are built of blocks/bricks) inhabitants construct their homes on top of their neighbours so that they tower up to 8 storeys high. This can cause the buildings to become unstable and in the past some have collapsed killing people. Because slums and favelas are illegally built on government land they are often poorly supported with infrastructure, this is

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