As people continue to migrate away from rural areas and into cities, cities
that are growing to devour the land around it, the numbers of people living in
slums, shanty towns and informal settlements are skyrocketing.
Currently, there are 200,000 of these communities across the world,
according to the United Nation's Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, most
of them in and around cities, and that number is growing exponentially. Even
before the economic crisis of 2008, about one third of all city dwellers live
in slums, slums which will grow in size by one billion more people within the
next twenty years.
While 90 percent of the world's informal settlements are in developing
nations -- such as India and Brazil -- they are a worldwide phenomenon and are
in European capital and largest American cities. Here are the five largest
slums in the world:
1. Neza-Chalco-Itza: One of Mexico City's many barrios,
Neza-Chalco-Itza is the largest slum in the world with roughly four million
people. Slums in Mexico City began growing in the early 1900s when the railroad
brought new industry -- as well as new industrial zones -- to the city.
As with many slums, most people in Neza-Chalco-Itza live illegally on
unauthorized land. However, unlike in most areas, some of Mexico City's slum
dwellers also live in vecindades, former mansions abandoned by wealthy families
that have been converted into low-income rental apartments. About 10 percent of
all the residents of the Mexican capital live in these buildings.
2. Orangi Town: Technically only 10 years old, the
township in Karachi, Pakistan is home to 1.5 million people and still growing.
Orangi, with 22 square miles of space, is significantly less dense than most
urban slums and also more structured. There are 13 official neighborhoods, each
with its own council, which has allowed the township to build its own sewer
system. Additionally, as only of 18 districts of Karachi, Orangi has government
representation, albeit in the lowest tier of the government.
3. Dharavi: After Orangi, the largest slum in Asia is Dharavi
in Mumbai. About one million people reside on just one square mile of space
that was formerly a mangrove swamp. People became flocking to the area as the
tanning and textile industries boomed and Dharavi's population density is now
11 times higher than that of the city that encompasses it.
A neighborhood smack in the heart of Mumbai, it retains the emotional and
historical pull of a subcontinental Harlem -- a square-mile center of all things,
geographically, psychologically, spiritually, National Geographic said in a recent
article. Its location has also made it hot real estate in Mumbai, a city that
epitomizes India's hopes of becoming an economic rival to China.
In 2011, other Mumbai slums might have surpassed Dharavi in total
population, but the figures can only be speculated at this point. What that
does mean, though, is that a number of Asia's largest shanty towns are all in
the same city (Notably, Mumbai is the fifth biggest city in the world).
Dharavi in Mumbai
4. Khayelitsha: Cape Town, South Africa is a huge, sprawling
city that has given rise to a number of new neighborhoods and townships over
the past decade. Khayelitsha is now the biggest of these and the community had
a population explosion after apartheid ended and blacks rushed into Cape Town
for jobs.
As of the last census in 2005, there were a recorded 400,000 people in
Khayelitsha, but that figure is likely much higher. The township's population
is incredibly young, with 40 percent of its residents under 19 years old and
only about seven percent over the age of 50.
5. Kibera: A neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya, the Kibera
slum is the second largest in Africa, with anywhere from 200,000 to one million
residents. Kibera is often used as the model for the environmental impact of
informal settlement. Without state sponsored infrastructure like plumbing,
residents resort to using flying toilets, which are just plastic bags that can
be tossed onto the street. However, Kibera is also one prototype for urban renewal
and slum upgrading projects. For about $300,000, U.N. HABITAT is trying to
transform all of Kenya's slums, staring with the construction of roads and
other services and an actual mapping of the area.
Rounding out a list of the 10 biggest slums would include communities in
Bogota, Colombia; Baghdad, Iraq, Venezuela, and Ghana.
The conditions in slums are surely a seriously problem with global
implications, but slums themselves do not have to be a problem for anyone. The
global population is booming -- the seven billionth citizen of Earth was born
only a month ago -- and people need to live somewhere. In the modern, global
economy, urbanization is a trend that is impossible to buck and informal
settlements are a necessary part of the process.
There are ways to make these communities more hospitable and less hazardous
on an environmental level. Some cities in Colombia are extending public
transportation lines out to the slums, which as encouraged economic and urban
development.
Additionally, others see the population density of slums as a blessing
rather than a curse, and perhaps as the future of cities. New, conceptual low-income
housing projects are springing up in the United States that could be a
model for the developing world. Single-family stacked houses like the ones
currently in Brazil and Mexico could be the prototype for the next generation
of cities.