A slum is a district of a city or town which is usually inhabited by the very poor or socially disadvantaged. Slums can be found in most large cities around the world. Slums are usually characterized by urban blight.

Slums are usually characterized by high rates of poverty and unemployment and are breeding centers for many social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, and despair. In many poor countries they are also breeding centers for disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, economic exploitation, and lack of basic health care. Though the terms are often now used interchangeably, slums and ghettoes differ in that ghetto refers to a neighborhood based on shared ethnicity. Slums are also different from favelas or shanty towns, in that they consist of permanent (if low-quality) housing rather than less-durable shacks of cardboard or corrugated iron.

In many slums, especially in poor countries, many live in very narrow alleys that do not allow vehicles (like ambulances and fire trucks) to pass. The lack of services such as routine garbage collection allows rubbish to accumulate in huge quantities. The lack of infrastructure is caused by the informal nature of settlement and no planning for the poor by government officials. Additionally, informal settlements often face the brunt of natural and man-made disasters, such as landslides due to deforestation for monetary profit, as well as earthquakes and tropical storms. Many slum dwellers employ themselves in the informal economy. This can include street vending, drug dealing, domestic work, and prostitution. In some slums people even recycle for money for a living.

Recent years have seen a dramatic growth in the number of slums as urban populations have increased in the Third World. In many countries, the rural peasants have moved to large cities in droves chasing low-wage factory employment after having been deprived of pre-colonial traditional property rights that often vest in the community rather than the individual. Many governments around the world have attempted to solve the problems of slums by clearing away old decrepit housing and replacing it with modern housing with much better sanitation. The displacement of slums is aided by the fact that many are squatter settlements whose property rights are not recognized by the state. This process is especially common in the Third World. Slum clearance often takes the form of eminent domain and urban renewal projects, and often the former residents are not welcome in the renewed housing. In some countries, leaders have addressed this situation by rescuing rural property rights to support traditional sustainable agriculture, however this solution has met with open hostility from capitalists and corporations.

Critics argue that slum clearances tend to ignore the social problems that cause slums and simply redistribute poverty to less valuable real estate. Where communities have been moved out of slum areas to newer housing, social cohesion may be lost. If original the community is moved back into newer housing after it has been built in the same location, residents of the new housing face the same problems of poverty and powerlessness.

See also

• favela
• flophouse
• shanty town
• ghetto
• blight
• Kibera ^*
• colonias

External links

• Borgen Project
• Slums of Victorian London
• Every third person will be a slum dweller within 30 years, UN agency warns; John Vidal; The Guardian; October 4, 2003.

Human habitats | Poverty | Urban studies and planning

Slum | Bidonville | Kawasan kumuh | Baraccopoli | Sloppenwijk | スラム | Slums | Slummi | Slum