Thammasat University students interested in sociology, architecture, political science, economics, urban planning, and development studies should find useful a new Open Access book available for free download at this link:
https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/123442
Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe is edited by Udo Grashoff The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of informal housing.
Informal housing refers to forms of illegal shelter unprotected by government control and regulation. Since no laws are applicable to such residences, anyone who lives there typically lacks such necessities as drinkable water, electricity and gas supply, emergency services, sanitation and waste collection. The state is usually unable to obtain rent or land taxes from informal occupants.
Dr. Udo Grashoff is a German medical historian. He indicates that researchers have suggested that up to one fourth of city dwellers in the world live in informal housing in places known as shanty towns, favelas, barriadas, bidonvilles, bustees, kampungs or gecekondular, depeding on the country where they are located. These houses are found in different forms as well as sociopolitical contexts, suggesting that urban informal life is a complex subject.
By comparing informal housing around the world, it is possible to note that squatting, or occupying an abandoned area of land or a residential building that the squatter does not own, rent or have lawful permission to use, is usually illegal. However, in the United Kingdom (UK), criminalization of squatting has mainly been motivated by fear of property theft, whereas in the Netherlands, the main factor has been hatred and fear of foreigners.
Those who defend the practice of squatting in the UK and the Netherlands have different perspectives. In the UK, supportive statements explain that squatters tend to be impoverished and homeless, with no other housing options. By contrast, in the Netherlands, defenders of squatters describe them as informal providers of cultural and social services to their fellow lawbreakers.
Another comparative study looked at informal housing in Hong Kong and Calgary, Canada. In both cities, rooftop squatters in Hong Kong and squatters occupying basement apartments in Canada were tolerated by officials, who made little effort to enforce laws against them.
A blog entry posted on the website of the World Bank asks,
How to Upgrade Housing in Informal Settlements?
According to recent estimates, South Asia is facing a shortage of 38 million housing units, largely affecting low and middle-income households. It comes as no surprise that informal settlements, slums and squatters are growing in all major urban centers across Asia to supplement the demand from urban poor. India alone has 52,000 slums inhabited by 14 percent of its total urban population. Almost, 50 percent of total population in Karachi, i.e. 7.6 million persons, lives in Katchi-Abadis. Bangladesh has 2,100 slums and more than 2 million slum dwellers in Dhaka. Even in Afghanistan, 80 percent of residents in capital city, Kabul, live in informal settlements.
On the same website, another blog entry wonders,
Is Upgrading Informal Housing a Step in the Right Direction?
Within the next 30 years, urban populations in developing countries will double and UN-Habitat estimates that around 3 billion people will need housing and basic infrastructure. Already, 70% of existing housing in developing countries is built informally without appropriate structural standards. Thus, the challenge lies in reconciling informal settlements with existing and future planned environments…
With an estimated 120,000 persons moving into slums every day globally, Julian Baskin presented a compelling case for urgent policy action to address the issue of informal settlements. Baskin illustrated the pros and cons of formal and informal housing development covering crucial aspects including time and cost of development, legal framework, among others. The emergence of informal settlements typically involves a process where settlers firstly move on to land, followed by the building of houses, and installing of basic infrastructure, a process which, in the case of Johannesburg, took as little as one week.
However, obtaining a legal title to such land is often more time intensive. On the contrary, formal housing works the other way around, beginning with obtaining title to the land, installing infrastructure, building housing, and finally moving into the space. This process in comparison to informal housing typically takes 5 years. An obvious implication of the time taken in the development of formal housing is that the supply of formal housing tends to lag the demand. With a pro-active and data-driven approach, which accounts for growth rates and urban expansion, planning agencies could balance the supply of housing stock with anticipated demand.
On the website of the Asian Development Bank, a publication on Urban Poverty in Asia begins:
According to the World Bank, 758 million people in Asia are still below the $1.25 poverty line. Indeed, based on numbers of the poor and their share, global poverty is often viewed as a predominantly Asian phenomenon. Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) share of the world’s poor is 34% while the other two regions—Latin America–Caribbean and Middle East—North Africa—account for less than 4% of the world’s total income-consumption poor. Of far greater and growing concern is the phenomenon of urban poverty in Asia, which is pervasive, severe, and largely unacknowledged. The World Bank’s evidence shows that while 75% of the developing world’s poor still live in rural areas, the share of the poor living in urban areas is rising, and in a number of countries, it is rising more rapidly than the population as a whole. During 1990–2008 for which a disaggregated rural–urban poverty numbers are available, the urban share of the Asia’s poor has risen from 15.7% to 21.9%, with the urban share of the population having risen from 38% to 43% over the same period. Moreover, while poverty incidence has declined across rural and urban areas in Asia, the rates of decline are far slower for urban poverty than for rural poverty. Of the aggregate numbers of those lifted out of poverty, nearly 90% of them are rural poor, attesting to what is often perceived to be a trend—that the processes of urbanization are said to be impacting rural poverty more than urban poverty. In several Asian countries, the numbers of the urban poor have risen over the 1990–2008 period, lending strength to the proposition that as Asian economies become more urbanized, they may face increasing urban poverty with some urban scholars labeling it as “urbanization of poverty.” Unlike rural poverty, urban poverty is complex and multidimensional – extending beyond the deficiency of income or consumption, where its many dimensions relate to the vulnerability of the poor on account of their inadequate access to land and housing, physical infrastructure and services, economic and livelihood sources, health and education facilities, social security networks, and voice and empowerment. In most of developing Asia, urbanization has been accompanied by slums and shelter deprivation, informality, worsening of the living conditions, and increasing risks due to climate change and exclusionary urban forms. According to the UN-HABITAT, Asia has 60% of the world’s total slum population, and many more live in slum-like conditions in areas that are officially designated as nonslums. Working poverty and informality are high in Asian cities and towns. Recent years have witnessed, almost universally, increasing urban inequalities and stagnating consumption shares of lower-percentile households, with Hong Kong, China registering one of the highest Gini-coefficients observed in any other part of the developing and developed world.
Information posted on the website of the Asia Society adds further context.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)