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Planet of SlumsOlivia Vazquez

What is a Slum?

•Over time there has been much debate over what defines a slum.

•The first definition was in before the 1800’s was that a slum was a place where criminal trade occurred.

•That definition was not sufficient because crime occurred everywhere.

•After many other definitions, the UN finally decided a slum was, “restricted to the the physical and legal characteristics of the settlement.”

Global Census of

Slums•Surprisingly only 19.6 of urban Mexicans live in slums.

•UN-HABITAT has studied the population of slums and found the world’s highest percentages of slum-dwellers are in Ethiopia.

•99.4% of Ethiopian population live in slums.

•Next to Ethiopia the highest number of populated slums are Chad (99.4%), Afghanistan(98.5%), and Nepal (92%)

•Bombay is the the global capital of slum dwelling, followed by Mexico City.

Slums of Luanda

•The poorest urban populations are found in Luanda, Maputo, Kinshasa, and Bolivia.

•There 2/3 or more of residents earn less than the cost of their minimum required daily nutrition.

•In Luanda, one quarter of the households have consumptions of less than 75 cents per day.

•Luanda also has the highest mortality rate for children under 5 with 320 per thousand in 1993.

Unnatural Hazards

•Slums in Johannesburg are on top of contaminated soil from generations of mining.

•Half of the region's non-white population lives in informal settlements in toxic waste and chronic ground collapse.

•In Caracas, slums housing almost 2/3 of the population and homes are built on unstable hillsides and in deep gorges.

•In Manila rather than worrying about landslides, they worry about flooding, as the geographic region gets a lot of storms.

Fires in the Slums

•May people do not stay up worrying about floods or landslides, they worry about fires.

•Fires are due to the mixture of inflammable dwellings extraordinary density, and dependence upon open fires for heat and cooking.

•Most of the fires that happen in the slums are not accidents.

•Many fires happen as an order by landlords, who would rather demolish the slums easily by starting a fire