Learning from the Slums

A slum is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. (by UN-HABITAT, the United Nations) If slums look dirty and chaotic, they are also one of the most efficient urban settlements: people can live close to each other, and possibilities to randomly meet are maximized. Social organization emerges naturally, and the overall system uses the available resources in the most efficient way. But slums, despite all these good qualities, keep on being dirty and unhealthy places, lacking both sanitary and social services. How can we turn them in a place that could be healthy both for body and mind?

The main problem of slums is neither density nor the lack of sanitary infrastructure. The main problem is the lack of reconnaissance between slum dwellers and local authorities that blocks all long-term investment: a precarious relationship that leads to precarious dwellings. With a new agreement between public authorities and slum dwellers, slum can improve their condition, and even become attractive places, just like medieval cities did. (Robert Neuwirth)

Alterative way of developing under-developed urban area could be learned from how the slum area organizes by itself. It could be somewhat ‘selfish’ as looked from the outside; it is more organic and natural way of development than the planned city.