Slums: a municipal definition
Lately, in the context of my work with Slum Dwellers International, I’ve been thinking about the problems of basic municipal infrastructure — water and sanitation (usually abbreviated W&S) — and along these lines, recently read a terrific paper by Jim Salzman of Duke.
Thirst, a Short History of Drinking Water, chronicles humanity’s earliest efforts to assure clean water and to create rules to distribute it among people. It’s a great paper, about which I’ll have quite a bit more to say in future posts. Meanwhile, if formalizing slums is the greatest demographic issue facing the twenty-first century, and cities are going to be the nexus of intervention and change, then delivery of water and sanitation into established urban environments becomes the most important long-term priority for donor and governmental entities seek to help the global south advance.
Rooftops in Kibera,
When I went off to
I’ve come up with yet another definition, the urbanist’s municipal definition:
A slum is an urban environment where informal housing has outstripped formal utilities
of which water and sanitation is the most primitive and most essential
Rooftop standpipe, public lavatory, Dharavi,
This definition is consistent with others I’ve proposed:
Slums are spontaneous communities because they are formed by people who choose to move to a place — almost always in search of money income.
Slums are economically rational because they sustain themselves out of a stable set of bargains among tenants (who want to consume as little housing as possible, because that’s all they can afford) and landlords (who want to provide as little maintenance as possible, because that’s how they make money despite low rents).
Slums are a wealth-extraction machine because the effect of under-investment is wealth transfer from the very poor to the landed.
Slums have existed ever since humanity urbanized. We find them in
Mumbai, 2006
What formalizes a slum? Reinvestment in both private space (home improvement) and public space (water and sanitation, usually funded by the municipality).
Not cheap any more!
In each case, somehow the municipal infrastructure was retrofitted into slum neighborhoods.
Cobblestone street in
Paved street in Jadibanagar, built by Mahila Housing Trust, 2007
Since London outgrew its slums, Boston its, New York its, I want to know how those cities retrofitted municipal utilities into slum neighborhoods – because those business models, low tech and small scale as they were, are probably better paradigms than global-north formalized systems. Salzman’s paper echoes what I found in
Basic Model. Public sector funds capital infrastructure as a non-recoverable cost, for some larger civic or political purpose. Thereafter, users pay the (modest) maintenance fees. The basic model even has an insider-outsider twist: insiders (neighbors) get unlimited use via monthly subscription, outsiders are pay-per-use.
Municipal infrastructure, for low-cost water, two millennia old
Basic-Plus Model. As an overlay to the Basic Model, which delivers a group-benefit quality of service (Basic Service), high-end customers can pay bonus fees (the premium) and get higher-quality, more personalized service.
There are eerie parallels with the Basic and Basic-Plus Models when one looks at urban dense-living wi-fi as provided by municipalities, or in a slightly older technology, cable TV and telephony.
Things evolve the same way, don’t they?
The Basic service is – well – basic, and most people pay the Plus premium. One can also see Basic and Basic-Plus Models in, say, metropolitan transport, where subways and buses and trains offer steep discounts to volume users, who are conveniently residents rather than tourists.
Give me formal schooling and clean water and I’ll change the world
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