Concept of Slum

Kazi Nur Kawsar Kanon

Department of Urban and Regional Planning

Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka

The slum dwellers live in measurable and sub-human condition. They can easily indentify from other residents by the physical structure of their dwellings, which are found to be congested, unhygienic and inhabitable. Respiratory diseases are common among the slum dwellers. If look of the characteristics of the slum we find miserable condition and a degraded environment. The people are poor and hence the poverty of inhabitants is a universal characteristic of slums.

A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. The number of slum dwellers is rising. One billion people worldwide live in slums and the figure will likely grow to 2 billion by 2030.

Characteristics of slum:

 The characteristics associated with slums vary from place to place. Slums are usually characterized by urban decay, high rates of poverty, and unemployment. They are commonly seen as “breeding grounds” for social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, high incidence of mental illness, and suicide. In many poor countries they exhibit high incidence of disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care. A UN Expert Group has created an operational definition of a slum as an area that combines to various extents the following characteristics: inadequate access to safe water; inadequate access to sanitation and other infrastructure; poor structural quality of housing; overcrowding; and insecure residential status.

Land use of slum:

1.       Residential 

2.       Commercial actives 

3.       Services 

4.       Production 

5.       Infrastructure

6.       Other

The percentage of slum Dwellers of urban population is given below

Human Development Index	Urban Population	Slum Dwellers as % of Urban Population
High	78.5%	7.6%
Medium	42.6%	35.6%
Low	29.7%	79.7%

Table 1: Urbanization and Slum Incidence (Source: State of World Cities Report 2004, UN-HABITAT

 About Urban blight:

A city gets older, some buildings or properties are not maintained and become run-down, abandoned or condemned. This can also be referred to as urban decay. People who cannot afford to live elsewhere must sometimes live in properties that are without appropriate maintenance, such as housing projects, which may also be called slums or ghettos. The look and condition of these properties, as well as their use can be said to be urban blight. A desolate, inhospitable city landscape which is a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation or changing population, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime. Major structural changes in global economies, transportation, and government policy created the economic and then the social conditions resulting in urban decay.

About Squatters:

The terms Squatter are unauthorized dwelling build by low-income people in government land, squatters include persons or families residing or squatting in terminals, pavement, and public or semi-public office building. The density of population of squatter settlement is extremely high, almost 1500 – 2000 persons per acre. The term squatting generally means illegal occupation of urban land. It is considered as a residential area in an urban locality inhabited by the very poor who have no access to tenured land of their own, and hence "squat" on vacant land, either private or public.

Squatters may be classified:

·         Based on tenancy: a) Owner  b) Tenant

·         Based on use: a) residential  b) Commercial

·         Based on building location: a) Ground  b)Roof top

 c) Boat (floating)

·         Based on structure: a) Kutcha  b) semi-pucca

c) Pucca

These will include awful levels of sanitation with no toilets but a system which is known as 'flying toilets', where you excrete into a plastic bag and then throw it out of your window. The government should develop the sectors of economic and social sectors. A "formal sector" provided for and managed by the government and an "informal sector" which lies outside the purview of the government and primarily serves the low-income groups. Sometimes squatter can be defined as the legally recognized settlement with slum characteristics.

Difference between them: Slum is comparatively more densely populated then urban blight and squatter. In a slum public facilities are not good like water, electricity, drainage, roads. But in squatters this facilities are available and also in urban blight. Urban blight are use to be a part of the city sometime but slums are not recognized as a part of city.

Relation between them: Slum, blight & squatter settlement for poor low income people. Squatter is made for the people who live in the slum, sometimes squatters are build where slum situated. The density of slum, blight and squatter is grater then the other area of city. They allocated in the city. These places are the centre of all social crime, drugs, jubinal delinquency. The people who live there are not treated well by the government.

       The government should treat them as useful and important part of urban area. For this they should make hard rules and regulation for settlement and development of urban decay, squatter, slum. All the public utility service should make available for the people who residence there. Elementary schools should build, also give a permanent job for the unemployment people.