Myths about slums and how our cities actually need them
Experts prove that informal economies flourish and public space is protected by these settlements.
Experts prove that informal economies flourish and public space is protected by these settlements. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE
KARACHI:
There are three myths about slums. They are temporary, don’t belong in the modern city and contribute little to urban development.
But Alison Brown, who is a professor of urban planning and international development at Cardiff University, would beg to differ. On Saturday, she presented her case at NED University’s ninth annual seminar on urban and regional planning with the theme housing for all.
First of all the numbers tell a different story of informality, how widespread it is and where it is located. For people who make policy with the underlying assumption that informal urbanism is temporary, they need to consider that Karachi, for example, is 55% informal housing.
If you telescope out, the world is 7.2 billion people but these populations are not evenly distributed. A high proportion of them are in Asia and in small and medium-sized cities.
“Economies are changing,” she said. “Globalisation has led to new patterns of employment, the casualisation of the labour force and an increase in informal work.” In India, the unorganised sector employs 86% of the national workforce and 91% of women workers. And nearly 50% of workers of all ages used their home or the street as their place of work. In Pakistan, 46% of people (from 2001 to 2002) were found to be using a non-conventional place of work.
“This is the norm; it is nothing different,” she added. “Informality is going to be around for a long time and as professionals we need to deal with it.”
Another myth is that housing-based enterprise is incidental. But it’s just hidden. Take the woman who runs a tailoring business out of her front room, or sells pastries, or rolls beedis and sells to wholesalers. Brown gave the example of Sialkot, world famous for footballs and the city where 80% of world production originates. “But 58% of the footballs are made at home.” If you look closely you will see that people run hair dressing salons, dental clinics, small NGOs from their homes in slums. This informal economy based on working at home is also conducive to the elderly, who do not then need to commute long distances to reach a place of work.
In Mumbai’s Daharavi, people use their roofs to do business by setting up informal recycling businesses on it. They transport, store, sort and package recycled goods there. “So housing-based work is important but hidden,” she argued. “In Pakistan, 70% of working women work from home but they are not visible in national statistics.” So we need to stop thinking that “slums are a cancerous growth”, she said. We need to see them as “highly productive”.
Two other experts, Asiya Sadiq Polack and Christophe Polack, also looked at an ignored part of slums for which many people have misconceptions. With the help of NED students, they studied the settlements by nullahs. People assume that the nullahs are choked by the katchi abadis by them, but the reality is that the garbage is coming from the richer parts of the city. Christophe Polack referred to an argument that removing these katchi abadies by nullahs would make the city better. “That is also not true,” he said. “Some settlements have been there for a long time.” They have a right to be regularised.
Other people argue that removing the people would make Karachi a cleaner city. Even that is not true as the Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan proved. “We have urban sprawl as a result,” the Polacks said. “This creates disconnect between employment and housing.”
Ironically, these settlements have, in part, guarded the public space around the nullahs and over them. They are “a hidden, precious public space”. If these slums were removed, then governments would ‘encroach’ on them and build parking lots and malls.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 31st, 2014.
There are three myths about slums. They are temporary, don’t belong in the modern city and contribute little to urban development.
But Alison Brown, who is a professor of urban planning and international development at Cardiff University, would beg to differ. On Saturday, she presented her case at NED University’s ninth annual seminar on urban and regional planning with the theme housing for all.
First of all the numbers tell a different story of informality, how widespread it is and where it is located. For people who make policy with the underlying assumption that informal urbanism is temporary, they need to consider that Karachi, for example, is 55% informal housing.
If you telescope out, the world is 7.2 billion people but these populations are not evenly distributed. A high proportion of them are in Asia and in small and medium-sized cities.
“Economies are changing,” she said. “Globalisation has led to new patterns of employment, the casualisation of the labour force and an increase in informal work.” In India, the unorganised sector employs 86% of the national workforce and 91% of women workers. And nearly 50% of workers of all ages used their home or the street as their place of work. In Pakistan, 46% of people (from 2001 to 2002) were found to be using a non-conventional place of work.
“This is the norm; it is nothing different,” she added. “Informality is going to be around for a long time and as professionals we need to deal with it.”
Another myth is that housing-based enterprise is incidental. But it’s just hidden. Take the woman who runs a tailoring business out of her front room, or sells pastries, or rolls beedis and sells to wholesalers. Brown gave the example of Sialkot, world famous for footballs and the city where 80% of world production originates. “But 58% of the footballs are made at home.” If you look closely you will see that people run hair dressing salons, dental clinics, small NGOs from their homes in slums. This informal economy based on working at home is also conducive to the elderly, who do not then need to commute long distances to reach a place of work.
In Mumbai’s Daharavi, people use their roofs to do business by setting up informal recycling businesses on it. They transport, store, sort and package recycled goods there. “So housing-based work is important but hidden,” she argued. “In Pakistan, 70% of working women work from home but they are not visible in national statistics.” So we need to stop thinking that “slums are a cancerous growth”, she said. We need to see them as “highly productive”.
Two other experts, Asiya Sadiq Polack and Christophe Polack, also looked at an ignored part of slums for which many people have misconceptions. With the help of NED students, they studied the settlements by nullahs. People assume that the nullahs are choked by the katchi abadis by them, but the reality is that the garbage is coming from the richer parts of the city. Christophe Polack referred to an argument that removing these katchi abadies by nullahs would make the city better. “That is also not true,” he said. “Some settlements have been there for a long time.” They have a right to be regularised.
Other people argue that removing the people would make Karachi a cleaner city. Even that is not true as the Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan proved. “We have urban sprawl as a result,” the Polacks said. “This creates disconnect between employment and housing.”
Ironically, these settlements have, in part, guarded the public space around the nullahs and over them. They are “a hidden, precious public space”. If these slums were removed, then governments would ‘encroach’ on them and build parking lots and malls.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 31st, 2014.