UN-HABITAT twenty first session of the Governing Council, 16-20 April 2007, Nairobi, Kenya: three things we should know about slums

According to UN-HABITAT, slums represent one-third of the world urban population. This ratio is not going down in spite of all political declarations and official commitments. Why? Why do slums exist? Are they a planning mistake? Do they reflect the inefficiency or malfunctioning of land markets? Let’s think for a second why we have so many slums and santy towns. Of course, we know: slums are the best way found by many countries to provide cheap housing to the urban poor. And cheap housing means a cheap labour force, low-income workers. Slums are the physical expression and condition of urban poverty: in many countries they are necessary to ensure profitable economic growth! Before being a problem, slums are therefore a solution at a particular stage of economic development. They were a solution in Victorian London as they are a solution in Mumbai today. Slums are not a market failure, they are a market success. This is the first thing we should know about slums: they are economically useful, sometimes extremely useful, because they offer low-cost housing options to the poor.